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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



ADS AND SALES 



OTHER BOOKS BY MR. CASSON 



THE HISTORY OF THE TELEPHONE . . net $\. 50 
THE LIFE OF CYRUS HALL McCORMICK, net $ 1.50 

THE ROMANCE OF STEEL $2.50 

THE ROMANCE OF THE REAPER . . . . $1.00 



ADS AND SALES 



A STUDY OF ADVERTISING AND SELLING FROM 

THE STANDPOINT OF THE NEW PRINCIPLES 

OF SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT 



BY 
HERBERT N. CASSON 

Author of "The History of the Telephone," etc. 




CHICAGO 
A. C. McCLURG & CO. 

1911 



<# 

W O 



COPYRIGHT 

A. C. McCLURG & CO. 

1911 



PUBLISHED DECEMBER, 1911 



THE -PLIMPTON- PRESS 
[W • D •()] 

NORWOOD<MASS'U'S'A 



& 




©CU300990 



PREFACE 

THIS book is the first attempt, as far as I 
know, to apply the principles of Scientific 
Management to the problems of Sales and 
Advertising. 

It was begun as a series of addresses, delivered 
to various Ad Clubs and Chambers of Commerce 
in the Eastern States; and it is herewith developed 
into book form at the request of several of these 
organizations. 

This fact — that it was prepared largely for 
FRIENDS — will account for the frank and personal 
nature of the book. 

The criticisms that are made here are made 
good-humoredly, and with no purpose of belittling 
what has already been accomplished. 

Certainly I do not believe that Salesmen and 
Ad Men are less efficient than bankers, lawyers, 
doctors, professors, or any other species of pro- 
fessional men; but within the last few years new 
methods and higher standards have been brought 
to light. 



vi PREFACE 

When we remember that the total advertising in 
the United States amounts to TWO MILLION DOL- 
LARS A DAY, and that the total sales, in the home 
market alone, amount to ONE HUNDRED MILLIONS 
A DAY, we can realize the tremendous importance 
of efficiency in the selling and advertising of goods. 

Too much of our work has fallen into ruts — into 
the easy ruts of habit and routine; and it is the 
purpose of this book to point out that there is a 
BETTER WAY to do what we are doing. 

H. N. C. 
Pine Hill, N. Y. 



CONTENTS 

Page 
I. CAN THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY BE APPLIED 

TO SALES? 1 

II. EFFICIENT SALESMANSHIP 13 

III. A SALES CAMPAIGN— HOW TO START IT . . . 22 

IV. FACE TO FACE SALESMANSHIP 35 

V. THE EVOLUTION OF ADVERTISING 49 

VI. THE WEAK SIDE OF ADVERTISING 61 

VII. THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY APPLIED TO 

ADVERTISING 69 

VIII. THE BUILDING OF AN ADVERTISEMENT ... 77 

IX. AN ANALYSIS OF CURRENT ADVERTISING . . 90 

X. THE FUTURE OF ADVERTISING 140 

XL PUBLIC OPINION 150 

XII. THE PROFESSIONAL OUTSIDER 160 



ADS AND SALES 



A DEFINITION 

SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT CONSISTS IN CORRECT IN- 
TERPRETATION OF PHENOMENA, IN EXACT KNOWLEDGE 
OF LAWS, PRINCIPLES, AND THE INFLUENCE OF CON- 
DITIONS UPON RESULTS; AND IN SKILLED USE OF 
METHODS ADAPTED TO THE ALMOST INFINITELY 
VARYING CIRCUMSTANCES OF INDIVIDUAL CASES 

Engineering Magazine 



A PROPHECY 

THE INDUSTRIAL STRUGGLE WHICH IS ABOUT TO BE 
PRECIPITATED IN AMERICA WILL BE FOUGHT OUT ON 
A BASIS OF EFFICIENCY, BETTER EFFICIENCY, STILL 
BETTER EFFICIENCY, BUT UNIVERSALLY. EFFICIENCY 

Robert Kennedy Duncan 



ADS AND SALES 



CHAPTER ONE 

CAN THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY BE 
APPLIED TO SALES? 

TH E principles of Efficiency were first applied 
to war by Moltke. Result — the conquest 
of France in seven weeks. 

Second, they were applied to manufacturing by 
Taylor, Emerson, and others. Result — lower 
costs, higher profits, higher wages, and nearly 
twice the output. 

Third, they were applied to the Ordnance Depart- 
ment of the U. S. Government. Result — the 
official approval of the Government. (See report 
by Brigadier General William Crozier, Nov. 2, 191 1.) 

It is therefore not at all a visionary proposition 
to say that these principles can be applied to selling 
and advertising. At the present time, I am well 
aware, this seems impossible; but the doing of 
impossibilities ought now to be recognized as a 
part of our American day's work. As an unusually 
bright professor recently said to one of his students, 



4 ADS AND SALES 

who had declared that a certain work was impos- 
sible, "Of course it is impossible," he replied. 
" But if you and I don't watch out, some damn fool 
will come along and do it right before our eyes." 

Efficiency, in its new and definite meaning, is 
the doing with WORKERS what inventors have already 
done with machinery. It is a new point of view in 
the business world. It is as new as the theory of 
evolution was in 1858, and it promises to be just as 
revolutionary in its results. 

It is not System, for the reason that the most 
useless and wasteful actions can be done in the most 
systematic way. There can easily be too much 
System, but there can never be too much Efficiency. 

It is not Expert Accounting, for the reason that 
Accounting deals only with records and not with 
methods of work. Accounting, carried too far, 
means red tape and stagnation. 

It is not Economy, for the reason that mere sav- 
ing and penny-hunting is often the most suicidal of 
all business policies. 

It is not Energy, for the reason that Energy, 
misdirected, is the most universal waste of industry. 

And it is not Slave-Driving, for the reason that 
it aims to make workers do more with less effort. 
It is not frenzied production, as most trade-unionists 
foolishly believe. It is a sincere effort to apply to 



PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 5 

Business those methods and principles that have 
proved so productive in the scientific world. 

What does the scientist do? He first studies his 
subject until he gets an exact knowledge of it. He 
analyzes it. He takes it to pieces. He makes 
a careful record of everything he discovers. He 
watches it under all sorts of conditions. He has 
no theory about it, otherwise he is no scientist. He 
comes to it with an open mind. He LEARNS. Then, 
when he seems to have all the necessary facts, he 
builds them up into a hypothesis. He does not call 
this hypothesis the TRUTH, for if he discovers a new 
set of facts, he may have to change it. But it is 
true enough to depend upon. It is not a mere guess 
or fancy, as most of our " truth" is. It has a solid 
foundation of facts. 

This scientific method has been the secret of 
modern progress. It has created our new species 
of civilization. It first revolutionized botany, geol- 
ogy, astronomy, chemistry, physics, etc. Then 
it was applied to living things and it revolutionized 
biology, zoology, and our theories of the human 
race. Since 1860 it has been applied to almost 
every sort of manufacturing. It created the labora- 
tory and the drafting-room. Pasteur applied it to 
the prevention of disease. Burbank applied it to the 
soil. Edison applied it to electrical appliances. 



6 ADS AND SALES 

One by one, almost every activity of man is being 
analyzed and organized and uplifted into a science. 

We know to-day that if we paper a wall with white 
paper, we get eighty per cent of efficiency, in the 
reflection of light from the paper. If we use yel- 
low paper, we get sixty per cent. If we use 
emerald green, we get twenty per cent. If we 
use dark brown, we get only ten per cent. There 
is no longer any guess about the efficiency of wall- 
paper. We know the facts. 

As to the efficiency of our own bodies, we know 
that fifteen human organs show signs of improvement, 
seventeen show signs of decay, and more than one 
hundred are of no present use to us. Upon this 
fact-basis the greatest educators of to-day are now 
building up a new science of education — a new 
method of scientific body-building and brain-build- 
ing. This method, when it is completely worked 
out, will give us for the first time a system of real 
and efficient education. 

Even philosophy, that region of guesses and 
dreams, is being taken in hand by the pioneers of 
Efficiency. Wilhelm Ostwald, the foremost chemist 
in his line in Germany, has recently written a book 
on "Natural Philosophy" to show that philosophy, 
as well as chemistry, can have a foundation of facts. 

And now the next great step, in the general swing 



PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 7 

from metaphysics to science, is to apply the princi- 
ples of Efficiency to the selling and advertising of 
goods. What has worked so well in the acquisition 
of knowledge and in the production of commodities 
may work just as well in the distribution of those 
commodities. 

As yet the efficiency of selling goods has not been 
worked out. Most salesmen believe it cannot be 
done. They claim that there are too many variables 
in the problem. Perhaps there are, but nobody 
knows until the experiment has been thoroughly 
tried. In every case the victories of Efficiency have 
been won in spite of the most stubborn opposition 
from the men who were being helped. And one fact 
is sure — that the first Advertisers and Sales Mana- 
gers who try out Efficiency and succeed will find 
themselves in a gold mine. They will have found 
a better way to enter a market that handles, in an 
average year, thirty thousand million dollars worth 
of goods. 

Just as an efficient foreman of a factory saves his 
belts, stops air leaks, prevents bearings from run- 
ning hot, or shaftings from being out of line, or poor 
patterns from being used, so an efficient Sales Mana- 
ger may discover cheaper methods of publicity and 
a more effective way of presenting his goods. 

Just as Gilbreth has shown that bricks may be 



8 



ADS AND SALES 



laid with five motions per brick, instead of eighteen; 
just as Taylor has shown that one laborer can handle 
forty-seven tons of pig-iron in a day, instead of 
thirteen; just as Emerson has shown that a loco- 
motive plant may be geared up to build five loco- 
motives in a week, instead of three, so some Sales 
Manager will probably find, before the world is 
many months older, that he can double the efficiency 
of his salesmen and make every sixty cents worth 
of advertising do the work of a dollar. 

According to Taylor, the principles of Efficiency 
are: 

(1) Science, not rule of thumb. 

(2) Harmony, not discord. 

(3) Cooperation, not competition. 

(4) Maximum output, not restricted output. 

(5) The development of each man to his 
greatest efficiency and prosperity. 

Emerson is more specific and gives twelve princi- 
ples, as follows: 






(1) Ideals. 

(2) Common Sense. 

(3) Competent Counsel, 

(4) Discipline. 

(5) Fair Deal. 

(6) Records. 



(7) Planning. 

(8) Standards. 

(9) Standard Conditions. 

(10) Standard Operations. 

(11) Written Instructions. 

(12) Rewards. 



These principles, like the notes of a piano, may 



PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 9 

be used in many various combinations. Some 
might not be of any value in a sales campaign. No 
salesman, for instance, is likely to try to restrict 
his output, as a factory worker does. But when 
they are focussed, as a whole, upon a sales problem, 
they are certain to put that problem in a new and 
vivid light. 

To say that the public is an uncertain quantity 
and cannot be measured is absurd. The insurance 
actuary measures the public. He knows that eight 
out of every hundred will die an accidental death. 
He knows that there will be about eight thousand 
suicides this year and an equal number of murders. 
He knows how many will die of lung troubles and 
how many of heart disease. He knows the length 
of the average life. And his knowledge is so accurate 
that hundreds of millions of dollars are staked upon 
his calculations. 

The experts of the telephone companies measure 
the public. They construct maps and prepare 
what are called "fundamental plans," showing the 
present telephone needs of a city, and the changes 
that are likely to take place in the next twenty 
years. It is better, says J. J. Carty, our greatest 
telephone engineer, to STUDY the future than to 
guess at it. 

Even Wall Street, with all its trickeries and hys- 



ADS AND SALES 

terics, is governed by larger laws than it understands. 
Any chart of Wall Street's operations shows that 
there are long swings up and long swings down. 
The nation, as a whole, has its moods of cheerful- 
ness or depression. And the brokers and gamblers 
in the Stock Exchange are no more than the mercury 
in the national thermometer. They do not represent 
our wealth, as they often imagine. They represent 
our frame of mind. 

Railway and steamship companies measure the 
public. They know how many are likely to travel. 
They know how many will go first-class and how 
many trunks they are likely to have. Any expe- 
rienced passenger agent can astonish you by his 
accurate knowledge of the public's travelling pro- 
pensities. 

Newspapers measure the public best of all, 
perhaps. The circulation manager of a daily paper 
will tell you that the best help to circulation is a 
Presidential election. The day after is the big day. 
Next comes a prize fight between heavy-weights. 
And third comes a murder mystery or a local disaster. 
The relation between a good headline and sales is 
well known by all efficient editors. 

The magazines, too, measure the public. Their 
very life depends upon these measurements. A 
magazine is not sustained by local interests, as a 



PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY11 

newspaper is. A magazine is wholly a creature of 
public sentiment. It lives just as long as it pleases 
a certain large number of people, and no longer. 
It rises or falls every month in proportion to the 
timeliness of its articles. Several years ago I made 
an especial test of this, in "Munsey's Magazine." 
The Jews of Russia, at the time, were being very 
cruelly persecuted and a great deal of sympathy was 
being aroused in all parts of the United States. To 
catch this tide at the flood I rushed out an article 
on "The Jews in America," telling the Big Facts 
about that race, illustrated by twenty-five photo- 
graphs. The result, as might have been easily 
predicted, was a jump in circulation of forty thou- 
sand copies. Had this article been delayed for a 
year, it might not have created any unusual interest. 

So, as we have seen, it is possible to measure the 
public. Immense businesses are based upon the 
fact that the activities of the nation as a whole can 
be foreseen. Just as there are to-day actuaries who 
predict the public health, so there may be actuaries 
who will predict public opinion in its relation to the 
sale of goods. 

From the point of view of Efficiency, no Sales 
Manager is properly equipped unless he has the 
"fundamental plans" of the telephone companies, 
the charts of Wall Street, the statistics of travel, 



12 ADS AND SALES 

the record of real estate movements, the latest farm 
report, the bank statement of every large city, and 
the annual reports of as many corporations as 
possible. If he is ignorant of the movements out- 
side of his own trade, how can he know when to 
advertise or when to launch a new sales campaign? 
The Sales Manager of the future will be much 
more than a "gang boss." He will be a man of the 
most comprehensive mind. He will probably be 
a great citizen as well as a great salesman. He 
will have the instincts of the statesman, not the 
pedler. He will be the man in the tower, watching 
national tendencies and studying every new sign of 
the times. And most of all, he will be quick to 
notice and to appropriate to his own use every 
method that is proving successful in other lines of 
work. 



CHAPTER TWO 

EFFICIENT SALESMANSHIP 

NO AMERICAN can afford to treat sales- 
manship as a small matter. Why? Be- 
cause the United States had a salesmanship 
basis — because only thirteen States were gained 
by war and all the others were gained by purchase 
and bargaining. 

On five great historic occasions Uncle Sam went 
out with his money in his hand and bought more 
real estate. In 1803 he bought Louisiana from 
Napoleon for $15,000,000. Thomas Jefferson drove 
the bargain and actually picked up fourteen new 
States at a price of two and a half cents an acre. 
That was the greatest real estate transaction known 
to history. It doubled the size of the United States 
and gave us a territory which to-day contains twenty 
million people. 

In 1 822 James Monroe bought Florida from Spain 
at a marked-down price of $5,000,000 — less than 
the value of Flagler's hotels. Then, just after the 
Civil War and for no particular purpose, Uncle Sam 

bought Alaska. He paid $7,200,000 and got plenty 

13 



14 ADS AND SALES 

of blame for throwing away good money for snow- 
drifts. For thirty years Alaska was generally 
regarded as a bad bargain, and then some half 
frozen trapper found the Klondike. To-day Alaska 
pays for itself, in gold, about once in every four 
months. 

Our fourth real estate purchase was the buying 
of the Philippines. As to just why we did it no one 
has ventured to tell, for we first thrashed Spain 
and then to salve her injured feelings, we gave her 
$20,000,000 for an archipelago off the coast of China. 
This archipelago had not been advertised. It was 
not up-to-date nor serviceable. There was no 
demand for it. But, as almost all other nations own 
a few antiques, we thought that we could afford a 
private collection. So we are holding on to our 
purchase, in the hope that some time even this 
oriental archipelago may, like Alaska, give us a 
pleasant surprise and prove to be worth the price. 

Our last purchase — the Panama Canal site — 
cost us $40,000,000; very nearly as much as all the 
others combined. We paid a million dollars a mile 
for a non-existent canal, which proves that Roose- 
velt was at least not as clever a bargainer as Thomas 
Jefferson. But we had to have it, and it will no 
doubt be a source of national pride and satisfaction 
for centuries after its excessive cost is forgotten. 



EFFICIENT SALESMANSHIP 15 

So, it was buying and selling that gave us half 
our territory; and it is also a fact, not usually 
recognized, that salesmanship played an important 
part in preserving the Union. While it was Lincoln 
and Grant who put down the Rebellion, it was Jay 
Cooke, the famous banker, who sold the bonds and 
brought in the money. 

Jay Cooke was unquestionably the first to launch 
a national sales campaign. In 1864 he was ap- 
pointed by Lincoln as Sales Manager of bonds, at 
a time when the Federal Government was at its 
wits' end for money. At once Cooke sent out more 
than four thousand agents. He established a press 
bureau — the first in the world, maybe. And he 
advertised the bonds in every worth-while paper in 
the Northern States. 

His fellow-bankers were shocked and astounded 
at his methods, of course. They said he was no 
financier, nothing but a pedler of patent medicine. 
But Cooke only laughed at them and sent out 
another flood of hand-bills. He had a flaring 
advertisement hung in every Northern post-office. 
Such was his energy that in a few months the 
North went into a fit of bond-madness. After the 
noise and the shouting were over it was found that 
Cooke had sold bonds to the face value of $1,240,- 

000,000. Twelve hundred million dollars! 



16 ADS AND SALES 

Such was the result of the first national sales cam- 
paign in the United States. 

If ever there should be a Salesmen's Hall of 
Fame, one of the first pedestals must be reserved 
for Jay Cooke. There is no doubt that some of 
the abundant glory that has gone to Grant and 
Lincoln ought to have gone to this Philadelphia 
banker-salesman. As one editor very fitly said: 
"The nation owes a debt of gratitude to Jay Cooke 
that it cannot discharge, for without his valuable 
aid the wheels of government might have been 
seriously entangled." 

The truth is that salesmen have done more for 
progress and civilization than anyone imagines. 
They have done more than all the colleges to develop 
the peasantry of Europe into enterprising American 
citizens. They have transformed the "Man with 
the Hoe" into the man with the self-binder. They 
have given us the radiator for the fireplace, the piano 
for the dulcimer, the automobile for the push-cart, 
the typewriter for the quill pen. They have put 
more comforts into the cottage than the king used 
to have in his palace. 

How quickly we forget the great Sales Battles 
of our own day! Whenever a new commodity 
appears, we ridicule it, and oppose it, and refuse to 
buy it at any price. Then the Salesman trains his 



EFFICIENT SALESMANSHIP 17 

batteries on us. We fight for a while, and finally 
we surrender. But we give no credit, or glory, 
to the Salesman. We walk up to the counter and 
buy the commodity, remarking to the clerk that 
" It is just exactly what I have needed for the past 
twenty years." 

It is not true that new goods are manufactured 
to supply the demand. There is no demand. Both 
the demand and the goods have to be manufactured. 
The public has always held fast to its old-fashioned 
discomforts, until the salesman persuaded it to 
let go. 

There was no demand for the Railroad, and for 
years many people believed that thirty miles an 
hour would stop the circulation of the blood. There 
was no demand for the Steamboat, and when Brunei 
drove the first boat by steam on the Thames, he 
became so unpopular that the London hotels refused 
to give him a room. There was no demand for the 
Sewing-machine, and the first machine that Howe 
put on exhibition was smashed to pieces by a Boston 
mob. There was no demand for the Telegraph, 
and Morse had to plead and beg before ten Congresses 
before he received any attention. There was no 
demand for the Air-brake, and Westinghouse was 
called a fool by every railroad expert, because he 
asserted that he could stop a train with wind. There 



18 ADS AND SALES 

was no demand for Gas-light, and all the candle- 
burners sneered at Murdoch for trying to have a 
lamp without a wick. There was no demand for 
the Reaper, and McCormick preached his gospel of 
efficient harvesting for fourteen years before he sold 
his first hundred machines. 

No, it is not true, as learned theorists have said, 
that every great invention springs into life because 
it is demanded by the nation. It springs into life 
and nobody wants it. It is the Ugly Duckling. 
Everybody prefers ten cents to it, until a few Sales- 
men take it in hand and explain it. 

When Frederick E. Sickles first exhibited his 
steam steering-gear, now used on all the seas of the 
world, all the sailors looked upon it with contempt. 
"Nobody seemed to take the slightest interest in 
it," wrote Sickles. When Charles T. Porter first 
showed his high-speed engine in England, it was 
not taken seriously by anyone. "My engine," says 
Porter, "was visited by every engineer in England 
and by a multitude of engine-users; and yet in all 
that six months not a builder ever said a word about 
building it, nor a user said a word about using it. 
I was stupefied with astonishment and distress." 

When Bell first showed his telephone at the 
Philadelphia Centennial, it was endorsed by the 
greatest scientists of America and England. It 



EFFICIENT SALESMANSHIP 19 

was tested and proved. But the average man 
called it a "scientific toy" and refused to either use 
it or finance it. Bell preached telephony for a year 
before the public paid in the first twenty-dollar 
bill — and that was only thirty-six years ago — 
and the telephone business of to-day represents 
fifteen hundred millions of capital. 

There are men now alive who can remember how 
their mother sat down and cried when the first 
cook-stove came into the house, displacing the 
clumsy and wasteful fireplace. They can remember 
their first store boots and store clothes. They can 
remember the old battles between the teamsters 
and the men who built the pipe-lines for petroleum, 
between the puddlers and the experts who developed 
the Bessemer process, and between the news agents 
and the pioneers who established the first ten-cent 
magazines. 

It is a fact of industrial history that the inventor, 
by himself, seldom succeeds. His work has to be 
supplemented (1) by the manufacturer and (2) by 
the salesman. Invariably, an inventor is a man 
of limited mind. He is self-centred. His mind is 
interested only in its own creations. He is out of 
touch with the public. His knack is not in selling 
nor in making money, but in working out some 
theory or idea of his own. 



20 ADS AND SALES 

When he has made a working model, his part of 
the task is done. He must then turn this model over 
to a manufacturer, who will grapple with the second 
problem of producing it cheaply and in large quanti- 
ties. Few inventors can do this, as they are seldom 
efficient in any executive line. Many an inventor 
has come to ruin because he did not and would 
not recognize this fact of human nature — that an 
inventor is designed to do his work alone and not 
in cooperation with a thousand other men. 

And finally, when the new article has been per- 
fected and cheaply produced, the manufacturer 
must step back and make way for the salesman. 
A third man, with a third type of mind, is needed, 
in the proper marketing of a new commodity. The 
salesman cannot invent. His mind is not in-growing» 
but out-growing. He cannot manufacture. When- 
ever he has tried it, the costs go skyward. But he 
DOES know how to interest and convince the public. 

As a specialist, the salesman is new. Trade used 
to be so local and so small that there was no chance 
for a high-class salesman to develop. The man 
who made the goods was supposed to sell them, and 
his customers were men who lived near by, whom 
he knew as personal friends. Incredible as it seems 
to us to-day, it is a fact that before the Civil War 
no outside drummer was allowed to sell his goods 



EFFICIENT SALESMANSHIP 21 

in Philadelphia, Boston, Louisville, or Pittsburgh. 
Local merchants claimed and enforced a monopoly. 
The idea that any American has the right to sell 
his goods anywhere inside the limits of the United 
States is new. This country was nearly a century 
old before it permitted free trade inside its own 
boundaries. 

The Salesman Specialist is so new that no one can 
set a limit to his influence in the near future. For 
the first time in history he has national transporta- 
tion, national magazines, and a national system of 
credit. The little local fences are thrown down. 
For the first time he is being appreciated and ap- 
plauded and told to go ahead and do his best. The 
Salesman who fails, surrounded by the unparalleled 
opportunities and advantages of to-day, has no one 
to blame but himself. 



CHAPTER THREE 

A SALES CAMPAIGN -HOW TO START IT 

JUST as the Lusitania and the Singer Tower and 
the Brooklyn Bridges were planned by experts 
and architects, so a Sales Campaign should be 
planned by experts and architects. It should 
be structural. At least as much attention should be 
given to the selling of an article as was given to 
the inventing and the manufacturing of it. 

No great achievement, and certainly not the 
winning of an indifferent public, can be done with- 
out a Plan. This is one of the most important 
principles of Efficiency. To present an article to 
the public in the right way, by the right name, and 
at the right time, requires skill and forethought of 
the highest degree. 

This may seem to be kindergarten talk, but 
kindergarten talk is necessary in the case of many 
corporations. Four-fifths of our selling is still of 
the slam-bang, hit-or-miss species. Its main aim 
is usually speed, as though it were better to do a 
thing wrongly to-day than to do it rightly in six 

22 



A SALES CAMPAIGN 23 

months. There is seldom a Plan that is worthy of 
the name. 

The three main points to be considered are: 
(1) the article itself; (2) the possible buyers; and 
(3) the general trade conditions. 

The name, in the first place, may make or mar 
the sale. One tobacco company and one biscuit 
company recently put out new articles, with a big 
blaze of advertising, before they found out that the 
articles had been given names that were already 
copyrighted by other dealers. The appearance of 
the article must be studied, as the superintendent 
of the factory has seldom an eye for good looks. 
Then there are the labels, usually of the plainest 
and most uninteresting sort. All these are the 
dress in which the new article appears, and they 
go far to determine whether or not it receives a 
welcome. 

The buyers are of two classes — the dead-sures 
and the possibles. The former need little or no 
notice. They will come without calling. It is the 
POSSIBLE buyer who needs all the care and atten- 
tion and advertising. For instance, a set of ten 
books was recently published, containing the famous 
Brady photos of the Civil War. Such a set of books 
would not need to be advertised among the war 
veterans. Every veteran who could afford the 



24 ADS AND SALES 

price could be counted on as a dead-sure buyer. 
And the people who should be aimed at in such a 
case are the younger men and women, who have 
never seen war, and who have a right to see the 
Civil War as it actually was. The main purpose in 
studying possible buyers is, of course, to find a link 
between them and the article. Find the common 
ground and base your Sales Campaign on that. 

In the third place, study the present trade condi- 
tions. Consult at least half a dozen trade author- 
ities, who are most likely to give an unbiassed 
opinion. Put these opinions together and you will 
have a composite verdict that will be valuable, 
though in the case of some absolutely new com- 
modity all authorities are liable to be wrong. 

Once in a while, when an entirely new article 
appears, new and unique methods have to be in- 
vented to suit the case. For example, when the 
McCormick reaper was launched, a very complete 
Sales System was developed. It had six main 
points: (1) a written guarantee that the reaper 
would cut an acre and a half an hour and not scatter 
the grain; (2) a fixed price; (3) a responsible agent 
at every competitive point; (4) publicity; (5) the 
goodwill of customers — McCormick made it widely 
known in his early days that he never sued a farmer, 
and (6) public competitions with rival manufac- 



A SALES CAMPAIGN 25 

turers, which introduced a very valuable vaudeville 
element into the campaign. This Sales Plan is well 
worthy of notice, as it captured the trade of the 
world for McCormick. All told, the McCormick 
factories have made and sold SIX MILLION harvesters 
since McCormick invented the first one in 1831. 

The telephone business in New York City was 
dwarfed for years because it had no suitable Sales 
Plan. There was a flat rate system of charging, 
and no one could have a telephone who could not 
afford $240 a year. Then, in 1896, U. N. Bethell 
worked out the message rate system and the busi- 
ness shot up to be EIGHT times as big in ten years. 
This is one of the best cases on record of a good 
article being held back by a bad method of selling. 

Both the telephone and the telegraph were illus- 
trations of this fact — that the approval of scientists 
has little value in the business world. One word 
from Morgan or Frick is worth a whole book from 
Haeckel. Both Morse and Bell wasted much time 
in giving demonstrations before scientific societies, 
without any commercial result. In the end, both 
the telegraph and telephone were taken up and 
marketed by men who knew nothing of science, 
but who did know a great deal about sales. 

In the case of the Standard Oil Company we have 
an illustration of remarkable success, and equally 



26 ADS AND SALES 

remarkable failure, in the development of a Sales 
Plan. From the first the Standard had one fixed 
idea — cut out the middlemen. In this way it 
could make the best possible oil and sell it for a 
very low price; but, as the Standard has found to 
its sorrow, the aforesaid middlemen had a most 
undue amount of influence with legislators and 
judges. These middlemen did know, and the 
Standard did not know, the value of publicity. 
Even Mr. Rockefeller himself has now an inkling 
of the cause of the trouble, as he said recently: 
"I have often wondered if the criticism which has 
centred upon us did not come from the fact that 
we were perhaps the first to work out the problem 
of DIRECT SELLING on a broad scale." 

There is no good reason why direct selling should 
make a corporation unpopular. Direct selling 
means lower prices, better goods, and quicker 
deliveries. It means a straight track from factory 
to buyer. But the public does not know this. It 
is suspicious of any corporation that controls or 
monopolizes a product. And the Standard made 
the fatal mistake of not taking the public into its 
confidence. It did not know, in its earlier days, 
that people are PEOPLE, not wooden images, nor 
economic units. 

The Master Salesman of the world, Andrew 



A SALES CAMPAIGN 27 

Carnegie, was the first to work out a real Sales Plan 
on a large scale. What he did was so stupendous 
that few people have realized it. Very likely two 
or three generations will have to pass before the 
genius of Carnegie looms up in its true size. 

The fact is that seven short years before Carnegie 
sold out, his company was capitalized at twenty- 
five millions. Several years afterwards he offered 
to sell out to his partners for a hundred millions. 
This was before he himself had realized the impor- 
tance of first creating a demand, when offering a 
property for sale. Then the mighty Rockefeller 
came to him and offered to buy his plant. This 
woke up the Carnegian brain, which never at any 
time dozed very heavily. He sprang to the head 
of his 45,000 men and set agoing such a series of 
manoeuvres as the business world had never seen 
and never wants to see again. He made war on 
his competitors until they ran to Morgan for help. 
He was at that time making one-quarter of all the 
Bessemer steel and one-half of all the structural 
steel; but he began to build new plants and bigger 
ones. He commenced a tube mill at Conneaut, to 
fight the Tube Trust, and a railway of his own 
from New York to Pittsburgh, to fight the Penn- 
sylvania Railroad. He ordered seven new ore- 
ships to compete with Rockefeller. Almost every 



28 ADS AND SALES 

hour some new bulletin of war came from his 
office. 

What was the result? Carnegie sold out, and at 
a price that broke all records. The mere interest 
on his bonds gave him a pension of fifteen millions 
a year for life. Taking stock and all, he received 
FOUR HUNDRED AND FIFTY millions. He had capi- 
talized every man in his employ at ten thousand 
dollars apiece. The buyers paid this incredible 
sum cheerfully. They paid it with a hurrah. As 
Morgan once told Carnegie, they would have paid 
fifty millions more, if Carnegie had asked it. And 
what they got was not the whole Carnegie Company. 
The main asset of the company, Carnegie himself, 
was not included in the bargain. 

This climax of salesmanship shows that the main 
thing in selling is to make people want to buy. A 
selling atmosphere must be created. No one wants 
fans when the thermometer is below zero, or um- 
brellas on a sunny day in July. The CONDITIONS 
must be suitable, or else the best of goods may not 
sell for twenty cents on the dollar. 

It is said that the Chinese, when their roads 
get worse, strengthen their carts. The idea never 
occurs to them to mend the road. So a manu- 
facturer, when sales conditions are bad, will try to 
keep business up by hiring salesmen who are more 



A SALES CAMPAIGN 29 

competent and more expensive. In many cases 
he would get better results by spending the extra 
money on the conditions, instead of on the 
salesmen. 

For example, when the Standard Oil Company 
first tried to sell kerosene to the Hindoos and the 
Chinese, it had poor success. Conditions were 
bad. The lamps that were in use in India and 
China were all of an old-fashioned smoky sort. 
They were ill-smelling and flickering, and no kind 
of oil could burn well in them. The Standard at 
once made 750,000 lamps that were good and cheap. 
They cost eleven cents apiece, but the Standard 
sold them for seven and a half. The immediate 
result, of course, was 750,000 new customers. 

There are some salesmen, not many, who are 
unteachable and unimprovable. They are literally 
finished products, and they might properly be set 
on one side and labelled "Construction account 
closed." But there are so few of these men that 
they need not be taken seriously into account. 
Fully ninety-five per cent of salesmen can be de- 
veloped into greater efficiency. 

If a salesman is not doing well, it is very likely 
to be the fault of his Company. Some Manager 
looked at him with dead fishy eyes and gave him 
routine instructions. He was spoken to as though 



30 ADS AND SALES 

he were a clothespin. By the time he was fully 
instructed, he felt like a wooden man tied up in a 
bundle with eleven other wooden men. He felt 
more like a commodity than like a salesman; and 
naturally, when he went to work, he worked in a 
wooden way. 

Now, it is generally known among horsemen that 
when a horse balks or runs away, it is because he 
was badly broken or badly driven; and the same 
is true of salesmen. Break them in properly and 
drive them properly and they will neither balk 
nor run away. They will obey the line and pull 
the load. 

In most cases the job makes the man. Take a 
young man and send him out to kill cockroaches, 
and he will shuffle and dodge through his work as 
though he were a cockroach himself. But put a 
uniform on him and send him out as a fireman, 
and he will act like a hero — he will in a twinkling 
acquire a dignity and a courage that no one knew 
he possessed. 

So, in handling a salesman, the first thing to do is 
to LIFT UP HIS JOB. Tell him the Big Facts about 
the Company. Give him every fact that makes 
his Company unique and indispensable. Point out 
the officials who climbed up from small positions. 
Give him at least one book to read, which will tell 






A SALES CAMPAIGN 31 

him the story of his trade. Then outline his own 
special work, and tell him to go at it as though it 
were the one best job in all the world. 

Most men sink to their job's level. Not once 
in a hundred times will a man do better than his 
instructions and put his work on a higher plane by 
his own initiative. The great rank and file of men 
are just what their Generals are. The soldiers who 
fought under Cromwell, and were never defeated, 
were not the picked men of England. They were 
ordinary ploughboys and mechanics, drilled and 
welded into the famous regiment of "Ironsides." 
Neither were the men who fought under Stonewall 
Jackson the picked fighters of the South. They 
were a lot of common fellows who, under some 
leaders, would have fired their guns in the air and 
run away. 

The most striking instance of this fact in the 
history of American industry is the Carnegie Steel 
Company. Carnegie's forty-three partners, with 
the exception of Frick, Gayley, and Schwab, were 
not exceptional men. He could have got five hun- 
dred men just as able in the one city of Pitts- 
burgh. But under Carnegie they became the 
"Ironsides" of the commercial world. Schwab, 
who had been driving a stage-coach, was soon 
driving a labor army of ten thousand men. Pea- 



32 ADS AND SALES 

cock, who had been selling linen towels, was soon 
selling steel in sixty-five- thousand-ton lots. It was 
the Carnegian generalship that did it. 

A salesman should be shown how vital his work 
is. It is he who meets the Great Outside. He is 
not one of an army. He is alone. The Company 
stands or falls, in his territory, according to his 
efforts. He has to deal with strangers, not with 
employees. He represents, not merely his Manager, 
but the whole Company. The public opinion of 
his Company will be largely formed by his behavior. 

The Sales Manager who merely goads and speeds 
his salesmen is not the most efficient manager. 
He does not really MANAGE. He does no more 
than drive. The prevalent custom of inspiring 
salesmen by giving them enthusiastic " ginger talks, " 
thus importing into business the old-time methods 
of the Methodist revival, are well enough as a 
stimulant; but they are pitiful substitutes for the 
real statesmanship of selling. No amount of energy 
and " ginger " will atone for a bad Sales Plan. And 
salesmanship is certainly not a game of blind man's 
buff, in which the main object is to rush around and 
grab somebody. 

We are always hearing about the duty of salesmen 
to be energetic, to be loyal, to be obedient. So 
they should be. But what about the duty of the 



A SALES CAMPAIGN 33 

Manager and the Company to the salesman? What 
about the lack of generalship, that has caused the 
defeat of many a brave army of distributors? How 
many Managers really PLAN a season's campaign, 
as Moltke planned the conquest of France? How 
many ever deliberately investigate the needs and 
opinions of the public? And how many, when the 
campaign has begun, really lead their men in per- 
son, getting daily reports and sending daily helps 
and daily news? 

As to how far we can go, in applying the principles 
of Efficiency to Sales, we do not know. It may be 
found possible to use, to a surprising extent, the 
methods of the drafting-room and the labora- 
tory. We may be able to ORGANIZE the sales 
force, so that there will be functional salesmen. 

An efficiency expert, in properly organizing a 
factory, always selects and trains the fittest foremen 
for special jobs. These men are called functional 
foremen. One is made gang-boss. Another has 
charge of belting, repairs, etc. A third is made 
the chief authority on the use of machines. A 
fourth evolves into a route clerk. A fifth is made 
responsible for discipline. Each of these foremen 
thus becomes a specialist, so that there is one trained 
and responsible man for every line of work. 

So, it is quite possible that in many a sales- 



34 ADS AND SALES 

campaign there should be several functional sales- 
men. It might be the duty of one to keep in 
touch with the newspapers. Another might spe- 
cialize on farmers. A third could keep himself 
posted on fraternal organizations. A fourth would 
keep track of women's clubs. Whatever helpful 
information was secured by anyone would at once 
be sent to the Manager and scattered by him to 
all the salesmen. 

Much may be done if the Manager recognizes 
this basic fact — that the line of authority need 
not also be the line of knowledge. Any well or- 
ganized sales force, like a well organized factory, 
should have its staff of specialists. 



M 



CHAPTER FOUR 

FACE TO FACE SALESMANSHIP 

OST salesmen of the better grade are of 
three types or classes: (1) The actor. 
(2) The hustler. (3) The "Sunny Jim." 

The actor salesman is the one who has learned 
his story by heart, who treats all his customers in 
the same way and, like an actor, makes his entrance, 
his act, and his exit always in the same manner. 
If he is a good actor, he may succeed very well; but 
if he is a bad actor, he does no more than pick up 
the inevitable business. He has transferred his pro- 
fession into a habit. 

The hustler is the salesman who has been devel- 
oped by his instinct for travelling into a sort of hu- 
man steam-engine. He dashes in, dashes around, 
and dashes out. He wins the admiration of many 
customers, as being a " live wire. " On routes where 
he is known, he is liable to make good. But with 
a new article, or on a new route, he is not usu- 
ally a winner. He has, of course, a wrong ideal 
of efficiency. He does not see that mere activity 

is not necessarily progress. Just as the wooden- 

35 



36 ADS AND SALES 

legged sailor found, when he took on a load of 
whiskey, got his wooden leg stuck in the sidewalk, 
and walked around himself all night, so a hustler 
may often find that mere energy may leave him 
tied at the post. 

The "Sunny Jim" salesman is the popular species 
— the kind that gets dramatized. He is to most 
people the ideal and final type. Almost all the 
books on salesmanship, and all the lectures, and all 
the lessons tend to produce the " Sunny Jim" 
salesman. Even to criticise him will seem revolu- 
tionary to most of the present-day authorities on 
salesmanship. The man with the " glad hand" 
and the smile that won't come off — he is the one 
who is constantly held up to us as the model of all 
the selling virtues. 

Now, it goes without saying that a man with a 
smile will succeed better than a man with a grouch. 
"Sunny Jim" is more efficient than "Jim Dumps. u 
But salesmanship is a much higher art than the 
art of smiling. Good-humor and friendliness are 
not the main peaks of salesmanship. They are no 
more than the foothills. 

To reach the pinnacles of salesmanship, a man 
must have great qualities of MIND as well as great 
qualities of disposition. He must have a brain that 
can play chess with the public. He must be alert, 



FACE TO FACE SALESMANSHIP 37 

receptive, masterful. He must have his profession 
mapped out in large lines, and he must take his 
job seriously, as one that requires the severest mental 
concentration. 

When you stop to think of it, it is a great art to 
handle a Man, in such a way as to win both his 
trade and his friendship. A living Man is the most 
complex mechanism in the world. Compared to 
him, a locomotive is a play-toy. The slightest 
blunder may cause him to work badly or to break 
down; yet there are no printed directions attached 
to him. All we can do is to watch his eyes and do 
our best. 

In the first place, an efficient salesman never 
TACKLES his man. He unlearns the football tactics 
that he learned at college. All the things that were 
right in football are wrong in salesmanship. Goals, 
in the commercial world, are not won by kicks. 
If you crash unexpectedly into another man's mind, 
his mind will naturally resent your arrival; and 
first impressions are very lasting. 

The first few words of self-introduction are very 
important. I well remember how often I failed as 
a cub reporter because of my clumsy entrances. 
The first target I selected for an interview was 
Dr. Eliot, at that time President of Harvard. 
"Dr. Eliot," I began, blandly, "I will not take up 



38 ADS AND SALES 

more than half an hour of your time. I merely 
wish," etc., etc. Needless to say that in three 
minutes I was out on the sidewalk, politely re- 
fused and dismissed. Whoever in these tense days 
comes with the threat to rob us of a whole half 
hour — thirty large minutes — eighteen hundred 
serviceable seconds — may expect to be dismissed. 

Introductory words should be as few as possible. 
The really big men in the business world require 
none at all. They value their time by heart-beats. 
They are men of few words and they appreciate a 
statement that is short and straight to the point. 
The pith — that is what a competent business man 
wants. 

The most efficient method of approach is to come 
to a man from his own point of view. If you can 
do this, you will be welcome, no matter what you 
have to sell. You must never talk AT a man. 
Always talk WITH him. The difference between 
these two propositions is the difference between fail- 
ure and success. If you make a brilliant approach 
from YOUR standpoint, you may fail; and if you 
make a clumsy approach from HIS standpoint, you 
will probably succeed. 

After thirteen years of very varied experience as 
an interviewer and business-getter, I have no hesita- 
tion in saying that the only sure way to succeed, 



FACE TO FACE SALESMANSHIP 39 

in approaching any eminent or busy man, is to come 
to him from his side of the fence, not from yours. 
For example, I have invariably made it a point, 
whenever I had to secure a statement or an article 
from a President of a University or a distinguished 
author, to read his latest book, and to base my 
request upon one of its ideas. This method I have 
never known to fail. Any author, even if he is 
drowning, and he has gone down for the third time, 
will come up again for a few final seconds of life, 
if anyone will ask him a question about his latest 
book. 

The same plan applies to an inventor, who must 
be asked about his latest invention. A reference to 
his EARLIER inventions may only worry him. It is 
always the latest — the one that is just fighting its 
way — that stirs the mother-heart of an inventor. 
In the case of a Railway President, your question 
should be based upon the BEST item in his last 
annual report. On that item he has a reservoir of 
talk and an abundant supply of courtesy. And in 
the case of a banker, the key to his goodwill is 
some favorable fact concerning a property upon 
which he has just loaned a large sum of money. 

This plan holds good both with the smallest and 
the greatest men. I have met a few people who 
were so great that they were not concerned mainly 



40 ADS AND SALES 

about their own glory: Alfred Russel Wallace, for 
instance; John Fritz; Cardinal Gibbons; Parke 
Godwin; John Bigelow; Sir Wilfrid Laurier. But 
such men are exceptions to all general rules. The 
almost invariable fact is that there is an altar to 
vanity at every great man's desk; and whoever would 
hope for any favor must first offer up a small sacrifice 
upon this altar. 

In the preparation of magazine articles, I have 
found it necessary to secure favors and interviews 
from three of the occupants of the White House. 
To one I brought a new book, by a French author, 
which had a favorable reference to one of the unpopu- 
lar acts of this President. The President was highly 
pleased. "At last," he said, "here is one man who 
has found out a little of the truth." He at once 
gave me seven dollars to buy a copy of the book, and 
granted my request for a very difficult interview. 
A second President I secured by asking him if he had 
noticed that all his speeches and messages had one 
central theme — one motif — one dominating pur- 
pose. He had not noticed this, of course, and was 
as pleased as a child when I told him the magic 
words — Domestic Expansion. And a third Presi- 
dent was delighted to oblige me when I pointed out 
to him how much greater HIS responsibilities were 
than the responsibilities of Lincoln and Washington. 



FACE TO FACE SALESMANSHIP 41 

So much rant and cant has been written about 
unselfishness and modesty that I have no hesitation 
in speaking frankly. The truth is that no man has 
ever, or can ever, accomplish any great work with- 
out being self-centred. His creed must be faith in 
himself, and it is a cheap and silly sneer to say that 
he is an egotist. Certainly he is an egotist. He is 
more than that. If he is anywhere in the front row, 
or if he is momentarily in the public eye, he believes 
himself to be the central figure and main history- 
maker of his day. 

If you have ever noticed the fleet of tiny tugs, 
pushing the giant Lusitania into her dock, you will 
know how a great personage ought to be handled. 
The tugs do not meet the Lusitania head on. They 
do not collide. If they did, they would be crushed 
like eggshells. No — they trot up deferentially, 
moving in the same direction as the big ship. They 
push against her bow, gently at first and then harder 
and harder, until they are using every pound of 
force they possess. But there is never a jolt or jar, 
and the little tugs are plainly helping the big ship 
to do what she wants to do. There you have an 
illustration of salesmanship at its best. 

Self-interest and self-respect — these are the two 
handles that you will find on all men. Some men 
have one handle only, and others have both. But 



42 ADS AND SALES 

if you want to move any man, either genius or 
criminal, you must seize him by either one of 
these handles. 

Many a sale has been lost because the salesman 
instituted a comparison between the man he was 
talking to and some less important man. This is 
always fatal. In one case in which I was called in 
as an expert, a certain fifty-thousand-dollar prop- 
erty had been offered to a hundred or more prob- 
able buyers and all had refused it. The reason was 
plain. All the testimonials to the value of the prop- 
erty were written by small, unknown men, and such 
opinions, thrust upon larger men, were felt to be an 
impertinence. 

To every man the one most important and inter- 
esting word in the language is his own name. How- 
ever commonplace he may be, he has that one 
distinguishing mark at least. Better not go near a 
man than to meet him and mispronounce his name. 
And to meet him and not know his name — that is as 
fatal to the success of your interview as though you 
carried a wet towel and slapped him in the face with it. 

Few small incidents are more gratifying to a man 
than when some apparent stranger appears and tells 
him a new fact about his own name. For instance, 
suppose a telephone salesman wants to sell service 
to a man who is named O'Gray. He approaches 



FACE TO FACE SALESMANSHIP 43 

his man and says: "Good morning, Mr. O'Gray, do 
you know that we have eleven men named O'Gray 
in our telephone book, and we want yours to make 
the even dozen?" This interests and pleases O'Gray. 
Here is a fact about his name that he did not know, 
and which he will be sure to tell his wife and his 
relatives. Of course he buys the telephone service 
and becomes the twelfth O'Gray. Not to do this 
would spoil a good story. 

If you cannot discover any distinguishing mark 
about the man himself, talk about his location. Talk 
about his building. If it is well kept, tell him so. 
If the city is coming in his direction, tell him so. 
Say something that will please him and that will 
make him respect your judgment. No one likes to 
do business with a stranger. And if you show that 
you know nothing, and care nothing for the other 
man, certainly he will care nothing for you and 
your goods. 

Talk HIM. That's the main thing. Before you 
venture to worry a man about your merchandise, 
you owe him the honor of having first thought 
about HIM and what he is doing. To do this is not 
flattery, as some salesmen foolishly believe. It is 
rather good breeding. It is courtesy. It is show- 
ing a proper deference and respect for the personal- 
ity of your customer. 



44 ADS AND SALES 

In many cases, it is better to LISTEN first, and talk 
afterwards. If you have reason to believe that your 
man has any grievance, or any story of success or 
failure, draw it from him. It is always better for 
him to talk to you than for you to talk to him — 
this I have learned to be a fact in hundreds of cases. 
Many a salesman talks his own chances to death. 
No matter how interesting you are, you cannot 
possibly be as interesting to a man as his own voice 
is. This is an axiom of human nature which the 
great majority of salesmen forget. 

Especially if he has a grievance, you must listen. 
You must sympathize. You must see his point of 
view. If he has been wronged by your firm, you 
must make restitution. You must not insult him 
by explanations and defences. Even if he is only 
half right, which is usually the case, it is better to 
admit his contention and give him what he honestly 
believes is his due. 

As Herbert Spencer remarked, in one of his last 
articles, the brain is mostly FEELING. The faculty 
of reason is very small in the best of us. Reason is 
Nature's youngest and most delicate child. It was 
last to come and it may be first to go. But FEELING, 
on the contrary, is as old as the human race, and 
older. There will always be feeling as long as there 
is life. And one of the first steps to take, in a sales 



FACE TO FACE SALESMANSHIP 45 

interview, is to create a favorable feeling towards 
your company and your goods. 

I may go even further than this, and say — don't 
argue or contradict. There is an old fallacy float- 
ing around to the effect that a salesman's mouth 
must always be full of arguments. It must not. 
There is not any keen demand for controversy in the 
business world. Politics, not business, is the natural 
sphere of debate. If your customer insists on debat- 
ing, let him win. It is better to lose the argument 
and win the order than to win the argument and 
lose the order. One of the great discoveries that 
made Marshall Field the ablest storekeeper in the 
United States was this: "The customer is always 
right." 

Wherever possible, the salesman should carry 
something to show. It is always easier to win a 
man through his eyes than his ears. The best pos- 
sible argument is to show the article itself. The 
second best is to show a sample or model. Words 
are only third best. Also, it is often handy to have 
a writing-pad and a large blue crayon. Diagrams 
are very convincing. And if you can make a dia- 
gram of your customer's own situation, with him 
in the midst of his larger competitors, he will be 
fascinated. 

Even when you talk, you should talk in pictures 



46 ADS AND SALES 

as far as you can. Use homely illustrations. Give 
examples. Abstract talk scatters and hits nothing. 
Always speak of some one person or some one thing. 
You will not, in the course of the year, talk to more 
than three or four philosophers. For instance, 
when C. W. Hunt, the famous engineer, set out to 
sell his coal-carrier, he had just one argument and 
it invariably made a sale. His carrier transported 
the coal in little pockets, instead of dragging the 
coal along a trough, which was the usual way. So 
Mr. Hunt would say to a coal man, " You see, 
it's just like this; if you want to move a cat across 
a street, would you drag it across by the tail, while 
it clawed and scratched you and the roadway, or 
would you put it in a basket and gently carry it 
across?" This was not an argument. It was not 
logical. Coal and cats are two different proposi- 
tions. But it was a picture and it at once appealed 
to the customer's mind. 

From first to last it is the duty of the salesman 
to cater to his customer's mood — to his beliefs 
and his feelings. No matter how wrong-headed and 
whimsical he may be, the time to correct him is 
after you have made the sale, not before. Always 
you must keep in mind that the customer is the oak 
tree and the salesman is the ivy. Unfortunately, we 
cannot recreate customers. We cannot melt them 



FACE TO FACE SALESMANSHIP 47 

down and pour them into a new mould. We must 
take them as they are, bundles of fallacies and con- 
tradictions. That is the supreme honor of sales- 
manship, that it deals with the most difficult of all 
raw material. 

How to be adaptable without being servile, how 
to have the strong hand in the soft pliable glove, 
that is the problem of the salesman. He must be 
quick to harmonize with his customer. He must 
learn to harmonize with him as successfully as gray 
harmonizes with blue, or as golden does with purple. 
He must be a man of FINESSE without deception, 
and diplomacy without insincerity. 

Most people have become too wise or too refined 
to be captured by the old-time methods of brag 
and bluff. They cannot be driven into buying by a 
sandstorm of wild statements. Neither can they 
be cajoled by drinks, auto-rides, and theatre parties. 
The day for these fooleries has gone by. The de- 
mand has come for salesmen of a higher class. 

The fact is that human nature has moved up, and 
the salesman must move up with it. Human 
nature — that is the main factor in the whole prob- 
lem. The salesman of to-morrow will study human 
nature as Darwin studied earthworms, as William T. 
Burns studies criminals, as Dr. Osier studies dis- 
eases, as Belasco studies every detail of dramatic 



48 ADS AND SALES 

effect. He will study human faces until he can read 
the headlines of character that are written there. 
He will keep in touch with children, for the reason 
that many a grown man has the brain of a child. 
He must make people his entertainment. He must 
delight in people and in their myriad viewpoints. 

In this way he will keep fresh. He will avoid the 
lingo — the canned salesmanship, that is so universal. 
The more he mixes with other people, the more 
simple and direct he will be, and the more success- 
ful. He will be able to sell goods more quickly, 
because he will not be wasting his words. He will 
know just what to say and how to say it. 

The salesman of to-morrow will know that busi- 
ness is not a fight, but a cooperation. He will know 
that the military spirit, which permeated business 
in its pioneering days, has no place in mature com- 
mercialism. He will know that fighting is child's 
play, but cooperation is a work for grown men. He 
will know that he and his customer are NATURAL 
FRIENDS, just as North and South are, or Labor and 
Capital, or the Public and Corporations. Natural 
friends — like the eye and the foot, or the finger and 
the brain, that is the real relation between the seller 
and the buyer. Natural friends — that is the MOTIF 
of the new salesmanship. 



CHAPTER FIVE 

THE EVOLUTION OF ADVERTISING 

ADVERTISING is like electricity. It has 
always been in the world, but nobody 
knew of it or tried to organize it until a 
very few years ago. Considered as a profession, it 
is new; but considered as a force, it is as old as the 
human race. 

A freshman at a Western University asked his 
professor of physics, " Professor, how in the world 
could people breathe before oxygen was discovered? " 
And there are many business men who have the 
same naive mental attitude towards advertising. 
They regard it as a wholly modern innovation and 
expense; whereas, the truth is that it is one of the 
oldest factors of human progress, which we have 
only in recent years begun to use and understand. 

For instance, every war has always advertised 
the army. Every political controversy has always 
advertised the Government. Every epidemic ad- 
vertises the doctors. Every funeral advertises the 
church. 

The novels of Sir Walter Scott advertised the 

49 



50 ADS AND SALES 

Highlands of Scotland. Washington Irving, by his 
tale of Rip Van Winkle, advertised the Catskills. 
The American Revolution advertised Boston and 
Philadelphia. Edwin Markham's poem, " The Man 
with the Hoe," added twenty thousand dollars of 
new value to Millet's painting. And the story of 
Abraham Lincoln has advertised the United States 
to the common people of all countries. 

But until a century ago there were very few 
printed advertisements except short notices of the 
"Lost and Found" variety. I have seen in the 
British Museum the oldest surviving advertisement 
in the world — a request for the return of a runaway 
slave. It was printed on papyrus, three thousand 
years ago, by the owner of a plantation in Egypt. 

Like every other unknown force, advertising was 
at first looked upon with suspicion. It was penalized 
as though it were half a crime. As late as 1836, in 
England, there was a tax of eighty-four cents on 
every advertisement. Even in the United States, 
sixty years ago, it was held to be dishonorable for a 
merchant to entice a customer away from another 
merchant. The prevailing idea was that taking 
away another man's customers was like putting 
your hand in his till and taking away his money. 

The patent medicine men were the first to prove 
what advertising could do. They sold rivers of 



EVOLUTION OF ADVERTISING 51 

tonics and mountains of pills, good, bad, and indif- 
ferent, by appealing to that strongest of all human 
instincts — the fear of death. These men had low 
standards of business honor. Most of them were 
quacks and fakers. They slung out their bottles and 
pill-boxes by the million, kill or cure, and piled up 
great fortunes. 

So, with this bad start, the profession of adver- 
tising was slow in getting established upon a legiti- 
mate foundation. The first advertiser, so far I as 
can find, who dared to spend $3000 on a single 
advertisement, was the Fairbanks Company, 
makers of scales. That was shortly before the 
Civil War. 

After the war, Robert Bonner soon began to lead 
the way as the first sensational advertiser. In one 
week he spent $27,000, which was regarded as sheer 
madness by the merchants of his day. Then 
came Pierre Lorillard, advertising tobacco; Enoch 
Morgan's Sons, advertising Sapolio, and P. T. 
Barnum, advertising his circus. Few men did more 
than Barnum to call attention to the money- 
making power of advertising; but it must also be 
said that his influence upon the development of 
advertising was very harmful. It was Barnum, 
more than any other man, who created the idea that 
advertising is a yell and a lie. It was he who said 



52 ADS AND SALES 

that "the American public loves to be humbugged," 
and who did most to brand advertising as a mere 
catch-penny device. 

The first food advertisements began to appear 
about 1870. They called attention to cornstarch, 
tea, and yeast-powder. Chocolate was first ad- 
vertised in 1875, flour in 1882, soups in 1885, 
fruits in 1892, and sugar in 1901. By 1900 there 
were about forty firms advertising foods of various 
kinds. 

One of the greatest stimulants to advertising was 
the arrival of the cheap magazines, which, by their 
low price, were compelled to get a vast amount of 
advertising or die. A new epoch was created in 
advertising when Frank A. Munsey, in October, 
1893, launched the first TEN-CENT magazine. By 
this reduction in price "MunseyV jumped from a 
circulation of twenty thousand to more than half a 
million. It was the first magazine that really de- 
served to be called national, and it did much in 
its earlier days to prove the value of national 
advertising. 

To-day, according to a list which I have had 
prepared, there are at least SIX HUNDRED national 
advertisers, whose advertisements cost them from 
$100 to $10,000 apiece. As to the total cost of 
advertising in the United States, no one knows. 



EVOLUTION OF ADVERTISING 53 

One expert says $600,000,000 a year for printed ad- 
vertisements alone. Another says $800,000,000 for 
all kinds; and a third says $1,000,000,000. 

Advertising is now an accepted power in the busi- 
ness world. It has no longer to make excuses for 
itself. Like every other profession, it sowed its 
wild oats; and now it has settled down to a long, 
useful, and respectable life. The mightiest corpora- 
tions are using it. Banks are advertising for de- 
posits. Universities are advertising for students. 
Cities are advertising for citizens. Churches are 
advertising for converts. Governments are adver- 
tising for immigrants. 

Whether we know it or not, advertising has be- 
come one of our national characteristics. When 
the London TIMES, several years ago, sent over a 
highly skilled expert to report on our industrial 
efficiency, the expert (Arthur Shadwell) went back 
to England with a wonder-story of our achievements 
in advertising. " In the art of advertising," he said, 
"the Americans lead the world. The English 
humbly follow at a respectful distance; and no one 
else is in sight." This, from a Londoner, is worth 
remembering. 

Best of all, there is coming an appreciation of 
advertising. Its ideals are coming to view. Its 
larger meanings are being understood. It is being 



54 ADS AND SALES 

seen, not by many, but by a few here and there, 
that advertising is more than publicity — more than 
the description of merchandise. 

Advertising is the great NATIONAL STIMULANT. 
It teaches people to want more things and better 
things. It creates higher standards of living. It 
awakens energy and ambition. Literally, it has 
taught us to bathe and be clean. It has educated 
us in all the necessary habits of refinement. It has 
scattered the usages of the cultured few into every 
little town and hamlet. It has levelled UP the whole 
United States. 

Advertising has made our progress simultaneous. 
It has prevented the great cities from getting out 
of touch with the rest of the nation — a calamity 
that has often caused revolutions in other countries. 
It has driven out habits that were centuries old: 
clumsy, wasteful habits. It has put an end to 
homespun and log-cabins. It has been a civilizing 
influence of incalculable value, all the more so because 
in the United States the whole national structure 
depends on the decency and development of the 
average man. 

Costly as it is, in these inefficient days, advertis- 
ing is not an added expense any more than the 
railway is, or the telegraph, or the telephone. It 
pays for itself and more. It prevents laziness and 



EVOLUTION OF ADVERTISING 55 

stagnation. It makes us hustle and produce more 
wealth. Cut off all advertising for one year, and 
there would be a sensational decrease in our output. 
At once the pace would slacken, the energy would 
diminish, and the fate that threatens all moving 
things would be upon us. 

So, what next? Has advertising done all that it 
can do? Has it finished its thinking and originating, 
and settled down to a quiet old age of commonplace 
prosperity? Has the era of great individuals passed 
and has advertising become a routine — a mere 
matter of clerks and printers and money? 

The best experts say NO. The work of the pres- 
ent day is only a " beginning." If we could only get 
one glimpse of what Advertising will be in the year 
1950, I believe we would lose our satisfaction and 
complacency over present results. Our eyes would 
be opened to the inefficiency and crude pioneering 
methods of to-day. And we would buckle into work 
with a vivid sense of the fact that we are still " under 
the head of unfinished business." 

Before the vast structure of Advertising is com- 
pleted, it must pass from talk to exact knowledge, 
from deduction to induction, from metaphysics to 
science, from special pleading to statesmanship. It 
will rise to Art on the one side, and to Literature on 
the other. It will outgrow the cheap amateur writers 



56 ADS AND SALES 

and artists who are to-day doing most of its work. 
It will produce Advertisements that will be as 
famous as great paintings or great poems or great 
cathedrals. It will build up commerce on wide 
national lines. It will be the one COMPREHENSIVE 
profession, keeping in touch with all sorts and con- 
ditions of men, and representing, better than any 
other vocation, the CONSCIOUSNESS of the nation. 

Surely this is not too high, or too vain-glorious, 
an expectation, when we remember that forty years 
ago there was nothing; and that the whole im- 
mense business of Advertising is the product of two 
generations. 

The man who directs the publicity work of a great 
corporation, if he does his work well, has just as 
much right to the title of " Engineer " . as the man 
who plans a subway or a bridge. He, too, has to 
deal with opposing forces. He has to measure and 
calculate and construct. And he is none the less 
a builder, because the structure he creates is made of 
Public Opinion, instead of wood and steel. 

Publicity is an art, just as truly as architecture 
or literature or telephony. It is congested with 
amateurs, but the few professionals rank as high 
as the experts of any other line. No man is too 
clever, or too competent, to handle the publicity 
work of a large company, in such a way that there 



EVOLUTION OF ADVERTISING 57 

shall be no friction, nor hostility, nor misunder- 
standing, between the company and the public. 

The Publicity Engineer does big, responsible 
work. He is a "trouble-shooter," as the telephone 
men say. He creates goodwill. He teaches, explains, 
interprets, introduces, harmonizes, and leads the 
cheering. He is the friend-maker of the company. 
He is always on the firing line, trying to stop the 
firing. 

A Publicity man, in fact, must be very much like 
a Telephone. He must be linked to the whole 
community. He must be at every big mans elbow 
and in reach of the man on the street. He must 
talk half the time and listen the other half. He 
must have a line out in every direction. He must 
be as quick as lightning. He must do much with 
little, and he must be a live wire. 

The Publicity man has a bigger job than the sales- 
man. Why? Because the salesman handles men 
ONE AT A TIME, while the Publicity man handles 
the WHOLE PUBLIC AT ONCE. The man who 
writes the ad can't make a joke on the 
other fellow, because the other fellow may read 
it. He can't whisper of special favors. He has 
to work out in the open, where everybody can see 
him. If he makes a mistake, he can't forget it, 
like a salesman; or blame it on induction, like an 



58 ADS AND SALES 

electrical engineer; or deny it, like a public official; 
or bury it, like a doctor; or charge twice for it, 
like a plumber. He has to face it and own up. 

The Publicity man stands between his company 
and the public. He must understand both. He 
must interpret each to the other. If he does not 
know his company, he has nothing to say; or if he 
does not know the public, he does not know how to 
say it. 

A real thorough-bred Publicity man knows the 
public as the pilot knows the sea. He knows the 
rocks and the currents and the storms and the deep 
places. He makes it his business to keep in touch 
with all sorts of people. If he is a religious man, 
he will once in a while go to a saloon; and if he is 
familiar with saloons, he will once in a while go to 
church. Above all else, he fills himself with the 
news of the day. He eats news as an auditor eats 
statistics. He watches the whole field of books, 
magazines, and papers, as the lookout sailor in the 
crow's-nest watches the whole expanse of the sea. 

The real Publicity man works over his ads as an 
architect works over his designs. He knows that 
the easy way is always wrong. He knows that a 
good ad is as rare as a good editorial or a good novel. 
He knows that an effective ad requires the arts of 
simplicity, condensation, public interest, and per- 



EVOLUTION OF ADVERTISING 59 

suasion at their best. He knows that if Edwin 
Markham worked FIFTEEN YEARS to write 
"The Man with the Hoe," it is not to be expected 
that a famous ad can be written in fifteen minutes. 

The highly skilled Publicity man will tell the 
NEWS of his Company. He will persuade his 
Company to be sociable and to talk about itself. 
He will get his Company talking with its customers 
just as the village grocer does. He will teach his 
Company to be a good mixer. He will write ads 
that are as friendly as hand-shakes. 

Dignity has ruined more men than drink, and the 
Publicity man knows it. He knows that an ounce 
of sugar is worth a ton of starch. He knows that 
nothing injures a big corporation more than a spirit 
of absurd dignity and arrogance. 

There is no reason in common-sense why a great 
corporation should be deaf and dumb. There is 
no reason why it should lose the power of speech 
as soon as its assets reach nine figures. If for no 
other reason, a large company must advertise to 
reach its own employees and its own share-holders. 
There are more people in the Bell System, for in- 
stance, than there are in the city of Baltimore; and 
more stock-holders than there are in the State of 
Nevada. 

There is no good reason why a Bank should not 



60 ADS AND SALES 

advertise; or a University; or a Church; or a 
State; or a National Government. 

Some corporations are willing to spend millions 
for LAW, but they grudge thousands for publicity. 
They are penny-wise and pound-foolish. Every 
dollar spent for publicity is apt to save ten dollars 
for law. They would not need their big legal 
Dreadnaughts if they had appreciated publicity. 
From every point of view, publicity gives better 
value than law. It makes GOODWILL — law 
makes enemies for life. It EXPANDS — law 
contracts. It is the OPEN HAND — law is the 
clenched fist. 

High above all corporations, and even above 
all laws, stands the great REASONABLE force of 
Public Opinion. In the last analysis, the People 
are the Boss. What the People think to-day 
will be the law to-morrow. And the Publicity 
Engineer is the Ambassador of his Company to the 
Court of the People. He has got to represent the 
whole Company to the whole Public. 



CHAPTER SIX 

THE WEAK SIDE OF ADVERTISING 

THE faults of Advertising are the faults of 
youth. They are not serious or incurable 
faults. They are the faults of enthusiasm, 
superficiality, haste, and inexperience. 

The Advertising profession was started a very 
few years ago, and it was started EASY END FIRST. 
All that the Advertising Man had to do was to be 
the barker outside the door of the store. It was his 
business to give a yell and a hurrah. The public 
was like a herd of cattle — that was the theory; and 
they had to be attracted or driven by loud cries. 

An Advertising Man was a rooter — a booster — 
a human sign-post. If he made a fuss, he earned 
his salary; and his salary was not very large. Loud 
talk was his stock in trade. He was given the name 
of a commodity and told to whoop 'er up. " What's 
the matter with Smith's five-dollar suits? They're 
all right." 

Naturally a job like this did not attract many 

competent men. It fascinated young fellows just 

out of college, who had not yet become acquainted 

61 



62 ADS AND SALES 

with their own brains. It suited a certain class of 
adventurous ne'er-do-wells, who were good mixers 
and ready talkers. To be GLIB — that was the main 
thing. And so the stigma of glibness came to be 
attached to the Advertising profession, discrediting 
it in the opinion of all solid, silent, responsible men. 

Much of this juvenility still clings to the adver- 
tising business. The rooter and the phrase-maker 
are still regarded by the public as the typical Ad 
Men. Even advertisers do not as a rule regard it 
necessary for their advertising writers to know what 
they are writing about. Accurate knowledge is not 
demanded, and very few Ad Men have proved them- 
selves worthy of being classed with architects and 
engineers. 

There are still hundreds of Ad Men who dashed 
into their profession without serving any sort of 
apprenticeship — without making any study of 
the methods of manufacturing, or the history of 
commerce, or the formation of public opinion. Men 
who never earned, and who never could earn, two 
cents a word as writers, are still writing advertise- 
ments for which some merchant is paying half a 
dollar a word. And artists, whose creations would 
not sell for ten cents a dozen in any picture store, 
are still decorating advertising space that costs 
ten dollars a square inch. 



WEAK SIDE OF ADVERTISING 63 

It is not yet generally acknowledged that the 
Phrase without the Fact is mere cheap talk, and 
that the basic rule of all good advertising is — first 
the Fact, and then the Phrase. There are still 
some writers of advertisements who are ranked 
high, and who have no merit except a flashy smart- 
ness in the coining of epigrams. In fact, the im- 
pression still prevails that an Advertising Man is a 
word-monger and nothing more. It is not generally 
believed that he must be specially trained for his 
work. It is not believed that he should use scientific 
methods, or have any comprehensive outlook upon 
the business world. 

The natural result is that very few advertisements 
fit the goods. As Professor Scott showed recently 
in one of his suggestive books, a piano advertise- 
ment will often fit an incubator, or an advertisement 
of parlor matches will fit breakfast food. Pianos 
are frequently described as though they had no tone. 
Ostrich plumes are pictured as though they had no 
beauty. Shoes are advertised as though they had 
no comfort. Food is referred to as though it had 
no taste. 

Who can remember one clear, distinctive adver- 
tisement of pianos or jewelry or furniture or choco- 
late or underwear or ready-made clothing? Every 
brand claims the same things in the same way. 



64 ADS AND SALES 

OURS IS THE BEST — that is the one simple uni- 
versal advertisement. 

There are eight or nine silverware companies now 
reaching out for a national trade, and all but one 
have the same type of advertisement. They show 
what appears to be a page out of a trade catalog, 
nothing more. This, with prices, constitutes a 
silverware manufacturer's idea of efficient publicity. 
Not one, so far, has given us the picture of his designer 
at work. Not one has told us anything of the fasci- 
nating art of the silversmith. Not one has told us 
any personal story, so that we feel an intimate 
acquaintance with his handiwork. 

There are six or seven underwear makers who are 
reaching out for a national trade, yet what do we 
know of their goods beyond the mere memorizing 
of a few trade-marks? We hear nothing except the 
monotonous cry that OURS IS THE BEST. Not 
one of these underwear merchants has told us what 
flesh is, or why it must be clothed, or what a fabric 
must be that exactly suits the flesh. Not one has 
explained to us the precise nature of sweat. So, 
when their advertisements appear, they are so 
similar that they cancel out. One nullifies the other. 

There are a dozen or more of clothing manufac- 
turers who are reaching out for a national market, 
yet what does the average man know of them except, 



WEAK SIDE OF ADVERTISING 65 

perhaps, their names? Most of these manufacturers 
prepare a fashion-plate advertisement that would 
be very persuasive to the members of their own 
families, and forthwith spend hundreds of thousands 
of dollars in displaying it to the uninterested public. 
But not one has given us an advertisement that is 
of the slightest public interest. Not one has given 
us a photograph of Whitelaw Reid, for instance, 
appearing at a Royal reception in a suit of Adler- 
heimer clothes. Not one has even given us the 
facts — the very interesting facts, as to the similarity 
of human bodies. Not one has told us what is the 
most common structural defect in the bodies that 
they clothe. Not one has managed to give any 
sort of human interest to his particular brand of 
clothes. 

On the other hand, we have some advertisers who 
try to escape this monotonous shop-talk by turning 
their advertisements into Punch and Judy shows. 
Such ads attract attention. "Sunny Jim," for 
example, became nationally known. But who can 
remember what it was that he was supposed to 
advertise? There is nothing structural about such 
advertisements. They make a great blaze while 
they last. But they are nothing but vaudeville, 
and the crowd laughs and forgets. 

A third class of advertisers aim to avoid this 



66 ADS AND SALES 

Scylla and Charybdis of shop-talk and vaudeville, 
by trying to drill a trade-mark into the public mind. 
Sometimes they are brilliantly successful, through 
the choice of a proper symbol. "His Master's 
Voice," for example, is one of the best of this kind. 
The blue bell of the Bell Telephone System, too, 
was well chosen. But how can a busy public stop 
long enough to learn that a red diamond means a 
certain shoe, a red star a department store, a red 
cross a stove, and a red S a sewing-machine? How 
can any ordinary housewife, worried by many cares, 
acquire the differentiating skill of a Patent Office 
expert? 

Plainly, there has come a call for higher quality 
in advertisements. The men who have goods to 
sell are now spending more than two million dollars 
a day in advertising those goods; and few of them 
are getting full value for the money. FOUR TONS 
OF GOLD A DAY! That is the advertising 
appropriation of the United States. Such a price 
ought to be able to command the best brains of the 
human race. 

Big jobs require big methods. The advertise- 
ment that the town grocer writes for his neighbors 
is not good enough to be shown to the whole nation. 
The copy that is dashed off by an ambitious sopho- 
more is not good enough for a ninety-million audi- 



WEAK SIDE OF ADVERTISING 67 

ence. Now that we have reached a day when a 
single magazine is read by two or three million peo- 
ple, any advertisement in that magazine ought to 
be prepared as carefully as John J. Johnson prepares 
a brief, or as David Belasco prepares a play. Why 
not? 

The commonplace advertisement, when used in 
a national campaign, does not pay its cost. That 
is the fact that even the most lavish spenders are 
discovering. The public is surfeited with adver- 
tisements. It is deafened with brags and boasts. 
It is a most BLASE and sophisticated public. It is 
not at all like Robinson Crusoe, on his desert island, 
who was so lonely that he read every scrap of paper 
over and over again. Whoever would attract the 
attention of this pampered generation must have 
something special to exhibit. He cannot stun the 
American public with his two-page advertisement. 
He cannot delight it with a dainty booklet. He 
cannot charm it with his shop-talk or his self- 
praise. He must do something DIFFERENT if he 
wants it to be noticed and remembered. 

The Advertising profession, therefore, is now at 
the parting of the ways. It must choose between 
the EASY way and the HARD way. It must choose 
between the broad, smooth path of youth and the 
rocky, upward path of maturity. Many Ad Men, 



68 ADS AND SALES 

no doubt, will remain on the broad way because it 
is the easiest; and late in life they will discover 
that it leads to nowhere in particular. The others — 
probably one out of ten — will take the hard path 
and climb to success. They will evolve from hired 
writers of phrases to commercial experts. They 
will lift up their entire profession to a higher level. 
They will establish such standards as will bar out 
the fledglings and the amateurs. They will survive 
and flourish, for the simple reason that they will 
be the fittest. 



CHAPTER SEVEN 

THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY APPLIED TO 
ADVERTISING 

THE oftener and the more strongly any pro- 
cess takes place in a living organism, the 
more easily it can be repeated — there you 
have in a sentence the scientific basis of Adver- 
tising. This is the law of Advertising; and it is 
also the law that underlies all conscious life. It 
applies to all living things, from oysters up to 
men. 

Standing on this law, I venture to say that the 
aim of Advertising is to so interest and train the 
public that it will AUTOMATICALLY buy your 
goods. 

The object of the advertiser is to teach the buy- 
ing public a new habit. Now, a habit is formed 
by something that you have seen: 

(1) Recently. (2) Vividly. (3) Often. 

If I have seen an advertisement of Brown's Safety 
Razor this morning; if I have on several occasions 
seen striking advertisements of this razor; and if 
I have often seen the name of this razor in various 

69 



70 ADS AND SALES 

places, I will naturally say to the clerk to-day, if 
I wish to buy a razor, "Show me a Brown Safety 
Razor." 

I ask for that razor automatically. It is the sub- 
conscious brain that asks for it. I have seen it 
referred to so often, so effectively, and so recently 
that I do not think of any other kind of a razor. I 
ask for Brown's without any effort of will or effort 
of thought. The constant and vivid repetition of 
Brown and Razor have welded the two into one 
idea; so that the Razor pigeon-hole in my brain is 
labelled Brown. 

The greater part of human life is composed of 
habit. Our acts of will and acts of deliberation are 
few and far between. Thus the aim of the far- 
seeing advertiser is to make the public buy his 
goods, not from choice, but from habit. And it is 
right here that we find the common ground upon 
which both Advertising and Scientific Management 
stand. As F. W. Taylor has said, the really great 
problem of Efficiency "consists in effecting a com- 
plete revolution in the mental attitude and habits 
of the workmen and the managers." Whether you 
are trying to sell goods or to rightly organize a 
factory, your aim is exactly the same — to create 
a new habit of thought. 

This is the END of efficient advertising: and the 



EFFICIENCY APPLIED 71 

beginning, therefore, is to make unconcerned peo- 
ple take notice. We are not now speaking of that 
primitive and simple form of advertising that is 
found in trade papers, and which consists in a 
bare technical announcement or description. These 
homespun advertisements serve their purpose. They 
keep a manufacturer in touch with his own trade. 
But they are not to be confounded with real pro- 
fessional advertisements, designed for the outside 
public. 

To make UNCONCERNED people take notice — 
this is one of the main designs of every true adver- 
tisement. This is a simple enough doctrine, yet 
there are dozens of advertisements in our popular 
magazines that violate it with the utmost indiffer- 
ence. Scarcely any blunder is as common as this, 
the displaying of trade paper advertisements in 
popular publications. 

Invariably, when a man writes his own advertise- 
ments, he writes them to please his wife, his partners, 
his employees, and his present customers. He has 
no regard for the outside public. He cannot get 
out of his local rut. And so, he fishes to catch the 
fishes that are already caught. 

There is a well known definition of salesmanship 
that describes it as "the power to persuade people 
to purchase at a profit." This is not broad enough 



72 ADS AND SALES 

to suit the new ideas of advertising and sales. We 
should rather say that salesmanship is the power 
to persuade UNCONCERNED people to purchase. 
If a man wants an article, no salesmanship is re- 
quired to sell it to him. The man who hands out 
to people what the people want is not a salesman. 
He is only a retail handler. And so with regard to 
advertisements. The true ad is the one that brings 
in the new buyer — the indifferent buyer — the 
buyer who did not clearly know what he wanted 
until he saw the advertisement. 

Advertising is still so young and immature an 
art that many men believe they can write their 
own advertisements. So they can. So could men 
make their own boots and their own clothes, before 
factories and sewing-machines were invented. So, 
once upon a time, they could build their own houses 
and raise their own cattle and grind their own flour. 
But that was long ago. There have come since then 
professional ways of doing these things, which have 
proved to be so much better that the every-man- 
for-himself method has been abandoned. 

In this attempt, therefore, to apply the principles 
of Efficiency to Advertising, it may be understood 
at the start that I am referring only to professional 
advertisements. I do not know of any short and 
easy way to make the hand-made, homespun ad- 



EFFICIENCY APPLIED 73 

vertisement efficient. Advertising cannot be taught 
while you wait. And if Efficiency can touch the art 
of Advertising at any point, it must be at that point 
where it is most highly developed. This book, any- 
way, is not for amateurs. 

Our problem, then, is this: What is the most 
efficient way to make unconcerned people take notice 
of your goods, and continue to take notice until 
they buy them automatically? 

The first step, in all cases, is to study the article 
itself. How is it made? What are its raw materials? 
In what ways is it different and exceptional? How 
did it originate? What tests of it have been made? 
What are all the facts about it? Is it mentioned 
in literature? Is it pictured in any famous painting? 
Is it identified with any historic event? 

I have never yet come upon any article or com- 
modity that did not have a STORY. Find this 
story and you will likely have the best advertise- 
ment of all. As Sarah Crewe says, in Mrs. Bur- 
nett's fascinating book, " Everything is a story — 
everything in this world. You are a story. I am 
a story. We are all stories." 

The very oldest way of making a commodity 
interesting to buyers was the oriental way of telling 
a romantic story about it. This method is far from 
being abandoned, as you will find, if you step into an 



74 ADS AND SALES 

Armenian rug store. It is an ancient, time-tried 
method; and it can be used with truth as well as 
with fairy-tales. 

Does not the most common thing become valuable 
the moment that it becomes historic? Do we not 
go to see the most uninteresting places because of 
the story that is connected with them? We go to 
Europe and Asia, not because the scenery there is 
better than our own, but because in older countries 
every spot has its story. Whenever we see a log- 
cabin, it is more interesting to us because of the 
story of Lincoln. Whenever we see a steamship, it 
is more interesting because of the story of Fulton. 

We grown-up people are no more at heart than 
boys and girls, and there is nothing else that can 
charm us as a story can. All the magazines that 
our advertisements are printed in are kept up by 
their stories. It is the story that people pay for, 
not the advertisement. It is the story that gives 
interest and personality always and everywhere; 
and the story of a commodity must be the soul of 
its advertisements. 

Then, having ransacked factories and libraries for 
all the data concerning our commodity, we turn 
towards the public and proceed to make a second 
investigation. First of all we ask — will the public 
take this commodity as a necessity or as a fad? 



EFFICIENCY APPLIED 75 

This is important to know. The whole Sales Cam- 
paign may depend upon it. Much money would 
have been saved by the manufacturers of bicycles 
and roller-skates, for instance, if this question had 
been considered before the sale began. 

In the best way possible we must get at the public's 
point of view, in regard to this commodity. We 
must get answers to such questions as these: What 
does the public think at the present time about this 
commodity? Has it any prejudice? Has it ever 
been fooled by any commodity that is similar to this? 
Is there any other article which the public imagines 
is just as good? What will this commodity displace? 
Who will buy it, men or women? How many 
probable customers are there in the United States? 
Where do these customers live? What papers and 
magazines do they read? 

This information, when we get it, cannot by its 
very nature be complete. No one can offhand run 
out and interview the public. But a small amount 
of reliable information on this subject is vastly 
better than a guess. In various ways we may get 
straw votes concerning our commodity. We can 
ask the boy in the elevator, the street-car conductor, 
the stenographer, the preacher, the banker, the 
maid, the city editor. Samples of our commodity 
can be tried out, not by our own experts, but by 



76 ADS AND SALES 

ordinary outside people who have no sort of interest 
in it. 

And in the third place, after we have studied the 
commodity and its possible buyers, we must look 
into the present trade conditions. Is the trend up 
or down? What are the newspapers talking about? 
What is the state of the public mind? Are people 
in the right mood to listen to us? And is there any 
legitimate way in which we can swing our com- 
modity out into the prevailing current of thought? 

When we have these three assortments of facts, 
we can then begin to think for the first time about 
our advertisements. What we have on hand is 
raw material. It must not be used in its raw state. 
It must be shaped and polished, so that it will be 
attractive and convincing. The bare fact is not 
enough. There must be some skill and taste used 
in its presentation. We must prepare an appro- 
priate setting for our facts. 



CHAPTER EIGHT 

THE BUILDING OF AN ADVERTISEMENT 

FOUR things at least you must keep in mind 
when you begin to build your advertisement. 
If it is to be a success, the public must be 
made to 
(1) Look. (2) Like. (3) Learn. (4) Buy. 

How to attract the eye — that is the first prob- 
lem. No matter what astonishing facts are in your 
advertisement, it is no use to the people who don't 
see it. This rule seems to be too self-evident to 
mention, but if you glance through the back pages 
of any magazine, you will notice that several of the 
advertisements are practically invisible. Some have 
small white letters on a black background, which the 
tired eyes of city people cannot notice. Some have 
a fashion-plate face, which is to most eyes a warning 
to keep off. Some have a six-hundred-word sermon, 
so tedious that if the man who wrote it had read it 
to his wife, she would have forthwith gone to sleep. 
And others have a very large picture of an article 
that is too commonplace to be visible. 

Some advertisers are so self-centred that they 

77 



78 ADS AND SALES 

plan an advertisement as though it were to be the 
only one in the magazine. They forget that it has 
to compete for attention against a hundred or more 
other ads. Also, they forget that while every 
mother-sheep knows its own lamb, it is also true that 
all lambs look alike to the outside public. A Phila- 
delphia mechanic can pick out his own cottage in a 
group of several hundred that look exactly the same. 
He can see his house standing out from all the others, 
as though it were glowing with luminous paint. But 
to a passing visitor his house would be as invisible 
as one tree in a distant forest. 

The headline should not consist of more than 
FOUR WORDS, for the reason that the human eye 
can only see four things at once. This is a highly 
valuable fact which has been ascertained by experi- 
ments in psychology. It is not generally known, as 
you may often count more than a dozen words in 
a headline. It is a blunder fairly common, even 
among advertising experts themselves, to send out 
an advertisement that has not a point in it to catch 
the eye of an uninterested person, and which looks 
like a blur to the general public. 

In the matter of colors it has been learned by 
psychologists that the color that attracts most eyes 
is RED. The second best color is green and the third 
best is black. The best known device to catch the 



BUILDING AN ADVERTISEMENT 79 

eye is a round spot that is bright red. This fact has 
already been seized upon by the alert Japanese, and 
the result is that Japan has now the most efficient 
flag in the world, a red sun in a white field. 

If the advertisement is not illustrated, and not 
in colors, the catch-words must be especially well 
chosen, otherwise the ad will be "born to blush 
unseen." The National Casket Company recently 
sent an advertisement broadcast which had as a 
headline THE PURPOSE. This, of course, was as 
bad as it could be. When there are 450,000 words 
in the English language, there is no necessity to 
use the very commonest. The best headline is 
the one which appeals vividly and personally to 
every possible buyer, and to no one else. At the 
present time there are few better than the won- 
derfully effective catch-phrases of the Scranton- 
Correspondence School, such as: 

Look here, Son! 

Are you Boss of your own Job? 
Are you one of the Hands? 
Will Old Age Find you Still Drudging 
Along? 
What are you Worth from the Neck up? 
Step out of the Dinner-pail Class. 
Let us Raise your Salary. 
Raised! 



80 ADS AND SALES 

Such headlines whip and sting every wage-worker 
who is young, ambitious, and poorly paid. Every 
one is a home- thrust. If there is five per cent of 
manhood in a dawdling young clerk, such ads as 
these will wake it up. This School, by the way, now 
claims to have more than a million scholars, and no 
wonder. 

If a headline can be made timely, so much the 
better. There are days when the whole nation is 
thinking of one matter, and it is always best to 
follow the line of least resistance. The New York 
Telephone Company has for several years made a 
point of advertising on the day following every 
great snowstorm, calling attention to the conven- 
ience of telephony at such a time. The Gold Dust 
Twins, too, during the excitement over the success 
of the Wright brothers, appeared as the "Right 
Brothers," on a little aeroplane of their own. All 
such current topic headlines are effective, if the infer- 
ence is not strained and if there is no anticlimax. 

Whenever possible, an advertisement should have 
a NEWS interest. Few ads have a more powerful 
cumulative effect than a series of Bulletins, each 
containing some legitimate news that is of interest 
to the public. There is no good reason why more 
of the news of the company itself should not be given 
to the public. A public-service corporation might 



BUILDING AN ADVERTISEMENT 81 

go far towards humanizing itself by announcing, 
once a year, the number of its births, marriages, and 
deaths. It might print the picture of its oldest 
employee, or of a half dozen foremen who have made 
the best showing during the year. If some of our 
big unpopular trusts had known enough to adver- 
tise in this way, they would not find themselves so 
often in the repair shop. 

Once in a while, not often, a series of advertise- 
ments can be planned which will have a SERIAL in- 
terest. They will not only attract the public when 
they appear. They will do more. They will get 
the public waiting and anxious for them. Such a 
series is superb advertising, but it can very seldom 
be worked out. It requires a very special combi- 
nation of occasion, commodity, and genius. 

Above all else, in planning an advertisement that 
will catch the public, AIM LOW. The poet was not 
alluding to advertising when he said, "he aims too 
low who aims beneath the stars." Be simple. 
Avoid abstract words. Avoid long words. Avoid 
all such dead words as fundamentally, essentially, 
primarily, strategic, accessories, etc. Don't say, 
as the Bigelow Carpet man does, that you have 
"exclusive manufacturing facilities." Far better 
say "Our factory is as long as the Lusitania, and 
it cost nearly as much." 



82 ADS AND SALES 

Always remember that there are very few birds 
on the top of the tree, more in the branches, and 
millions in the grass. AlM LOW. A nickel a day 
pays a five-per-cent dividend on three hundred dol- 
lars. The highest building in the world was built 
by nickels and dimes — the Woolworth Building. 
If you ignore all your customers except those who 
had a college education, you will fail. The great 
mass of people, rich and poor, have simple minds, 
and you must talk to them in a simple way. AlM 
LOW. 

The SECOND problem is to make the public LIKE 
your commodity. Merely to attract attention is not 
enough. If your advertisement is in a shabby or 
disreputable magazine, you have done yourself 
more harm than good. A soup advertisement which 
pictures the chef with his finger in the pot is a very 
efficient warning against that brand of soup. The 
greatest care must constantly be taken not to offend 
the feelings of any class of people. One electric 
lighting company, for instance, recently displayed in 
a Southern city an array of large posters with 
this headline — FlAT LUX. The clergymen of the 
city at once took offence, declaring that this use of a 
sacred phrase was irreverent, and the posters were 
taken down. 

An advertisement must be pleasing. People will 



BUILDING AN ADVERTISEMENT 83 

go to a horror-play. They will read a horror-book. 
But they will seldom buy goods because of a horror- 
advertisement. Now and then the element of 
tragedy may be used, and to good effect, in an appeal 
for buyers ; but it must be introduced in a very tact- 
ful and gentle way. This is one of the evidences 
that good business is the best thing in the world, 
that it does not appeal to the motives of either 
force or fear. 

The most likable advertisement is the one that is 
like a mirror, so that when a reader looks at it, he 
sees HIMSELF. It is always effective to appeal to 
those experiences which are really very common, 
but which each one of us believes is peculiar to 
himself. The public, need I say, is a Bromide. If 
you can expose one of its innumerable little oddities 
of mind or temperament, you can give your adver- 
tisement all the force and directness of a personal 
letter. The composers of comedies are well aware 
of this source of popularity, and often draw upon it. 
A single little quip of this sort, such as " I can't do a 
thing with my hair when I've washed it," will some- 
times swing a play through to success. 

It may be taken as a safe rule that any object that 
is wholly familiar will not be noticed by the eye; 
that an object that is wholly unfamiliar will strike 
the eye unpleasantly, and that the object which 



84 ADS AND sAlES 

both attracts and pleases is A FAMILIAR OBJECT IN 
SOME NEW DRESS. There must be the mingling of 
the new and the old to get the largest results. 
"Home, Sweet Home" with variations — that is the 
one song which always and everywhere appeals to 
us all. If the variations are new and brilliantly exe- 
cuted, so much the better. 

Several years ago I applied this rule to the cover 
designs of a certain popular magazine. It had 
previously been using cover designs of an artistic 
nature, which are invariably too weak and washed- 
out to be effective. Moreover, an artist thinks only 
of artists. He very seldom thinks of the public, 
except with hostility or contempt. His ideal pic- 
ture is one that must be studied for an hour, whereas 
the ideal cover design is one that can be caught at a 
glance. In place of the artist's fancies, I suggested 
a series of simple designs in strong colors, each one 
being some well known object in a new or unexpected 
way. Since then this magazine — a fifteen-center, 
has increased tremendously in circulation and has 
attracted much attention because of its striking 
covers. 

The THIRD problem is to make the public LEARN 
the main facts about your commodity. Without 
this you have built your house of advertising on the 
sand. A man who expects to be doing business at 



BUILDING AN ADVERTISEMENT 85 

the same stand for the next twenty years should 
not advertise as though he had a travelling circus. 
It is not enough for his ad to be conspicuous and 
pleasing. It must at the same time carry its little 
fact. 

To mysteriously hint that there's a reason is not 
enough. You must pick out the one best reason 
and plant it in the public mind. If this main 
reason can be put into a phrase, it should be 
repeated in every advertisement. Repetition and 
novelty — novelty and repetition! These are the 
two standard methods of teaching the public a 
trade habit. 

Excitement dies out, but knowledge remains. 
This is the fact that advises us to make an advertise- 
ment something more than a shout or a vaudeville 
performance. When twenty piano manufacturers 
are clamoring "My pianos are the best," the one 
who can get the best REASONS into the public 
mind will win the trade. Instead of vaguely 
claiming superiority in every detail, it is much 
wiser to be specific and to teach people at least 
one simple practical reason. It is better to say, 
"My piano suits the voice" than "My piano is 
perfect." 

It is one of the most hopeful signs of the times that 
people to-day really want the best goods. Ameri- 



86 ADS AND SALES 

cans buy as much quality as they can afford, and 
many of them buy more. There you have in a sen- 
tence the secret of the so-called "higher cost of 
living." It is not true, in any general way, that 
goods are dearer; but it is true that we are all de- 
manding a higher quality of goods. And therefore 
an advertisement must point out in detail the vari- 
ous signs of quality. 

THE BEST GOODS FOR THE MANY. That is the 
American idea, and it is new in the history of the 
world. No other nation ever tried it. In older 
countries the commercial policy is — the best goods 
for the aristocrats and cheap stuff for the masses. 
But it is practically one of our national slogans that 
there is nothing too good for the man who has the 
price; and consequently there has been a movement 
towards quality all along the line. European coun- 
tries, so far as I have been able to notice, still depend 
upon the Poster style of advertisement, which is very 
primitive and barbaric; but in the United States 
our advertising is rapidly developing into a vast 
educational factor, used for the commercial instruc- 
tion of the people. 

The FOURTH and last problem is to make the 
public BUY. This is the proof of success. No 
matter what brilliant theories an advertiser may have 
— no matter what a hubbub his advertisements 



BUILDING AN ADVERTISEMENT 87 

create, his work is just a common ordinary failure, 
if the people do not buy. 

The most immediately effective advertisement is, 
of course, the "now or never" kind. It is this idea 
that gives force to the bargain sale. The public is 
told that certain goods are marked down for one 
day only. Promoters who sell stock use this method 
very often, announcing that the stock will be raised 
five points next week. This is also the standard 
argument of evangelists and insurance agents, who 
invariably give warning that to-morrow may be too 
late. 

The most usual method of getting direct results 
is to offer a free booklet. This was quite effective 
until it became so common. To-day every family 
that has ventured to answer a dozen advertisements 
is being flooded with booklets and all manner of 
follow-up circulars. With such competition a book- 
let must be very unique or very clever to produce 
a sale. 

A surprising number of merchants are offering a 
free trial of the goods. This is the old Sam Slick 
plan of leaving the goods in the customer's house 
for a month, and knowing that what a family once 
learns to use it will want to retain. It is sometimes 
necessary, when the article is new; but it is a costly 
and messy method of selling goods, unfair to the 



88 ADS AND SALES 

merchant, and demoralizing to the customer. Cus- 
tomers, like children, can be babied and spoiled. 

One fact is clear, that if advertisements could be 
made more effective, there would be less after- 
expense because of booklets, circulars, goods on 
trial, etc. Too many advertisers are satisfied to 
land prospects, instead of buyers. They merely try 
to START a customer, not to make the sale. And 
there is need to reiterate, just at this time, that the 
aim of an advertisement is not to get answers, but 
to MAKE SALES. 

Perhaps the most frequent cause of failure in sell- 
ing is the vague this-is-for-nobody-in-particular 
aspect of the advertisement. There is no aim — 
no direct appeal. Many able advertisers seem to 
wholly forget the two main classes of buyers — the 
FARMERS and the WOMEN. There are eleven mil- 
lions of the one and twenty-five millions of the 
other; and yet many advertisers have never thought 
of putting in a headline or a phrase that would 
persuade a woman or a farmer. 

The farmer and the farmer's wife are most likely 
to buy goods by mail. They have plenty of money. 
One American harvest would buy the whole country 
of Belgium, king and all. The income of the Ameri- 
can farmer is two hundred and fifty dollars a heart- 
beat, day and night. Few advertisers seem to have 



BUILDING AN ADVERTISEMENT 89 

realized this; and when they do, they will find that 
the immediate results of their advertisements will be 
handsomely increased. The farmer and the woman 
— these are the two main buyers of advertised 
goods. 



CHAPTER NINE 

AN ANALYSIS OF CURRENT ADVERTISING 

WHEN the principles of Efficiency are 
applied to a factory or railroad, they 
reveal striking differences between men 
and materials and conditions. One file, for in- 
stance, is found to do six times as many strokes 
as another file. One belt will require one-fifth as 
much repairing as another belt. One man is doing 
one-tenth as much work as another man, although 
both receive the same wages. 

Roughly speaking, Efficiency is an exploration to 
discover the BEST; and when we turn the search- 
light on, we find everywhere a jumble of good, bad, 
and indifferent. We are at once shaken out of the 
habit of thinking that a man is a man, a chisel is a 
chisel, an advertisement is an advertisement. And 
the aim of every efficient manager, when once he 
has discovered the actual conditions of his business, 
is to develop the good, instruct the indifferent, and 
lop off the bad. 

After an all-summer study of more than eight 

thousand advertisements, taken from weekly and 

90 



CURRENT ADVERTISING 91 

monthly magazines, I have found that they fall 
naturally into twenty-five or more varieties. Some 
of these varieties are certainly good; some are cer- 
tainly bad, and most of them are certainly indif- 
ferent. Some were easily worth several times their 
cost, and others must have done a positive injury 
to the business they were supposed to help. 

My general impression, after this prolonged study, 
is that the two basic faults of advertisements are 
the two that are, perhaps, the basic faults of the 
human race itself — Laziness and Conceit. The 
lazy advertisement is the one that is dashed off, 
without study or plan or hard work; and the con- 
ceited advertisement is the one that is not designed 
to attract the public, but to please the advertiser 
himself, his wife, and his poor relations. 

Some advertisements are both lazy and conceited. 
Here, for instance, is the general plan of hundreds 
of advertisements that actually appear in national 
magazines. Many sellers regard it as the normal 
type, and pay immense sums to have it displayed. 

It is the simplest, crudest, easiest, and worst 
variety of advertisement. It has no possible inter- 
est for anybody except the John Smith family. In 
a small community, where everybody knows John 
Smith, it is effective to a small degree, as we easily 
excuse the egotism of our own acquaintances. But 



92 ADS AND SALES 

as a form of national advertising it is, of course, 
absurd. It may be said to represent the Stone Age 
of advertising. 

JOHN SMITH 

Makes the Best Shoes in the World 

JOHN SMITH 

Can Fit Anybody 

JOHN SMITH 

Buys the Best Materials 

JOHN SMITH 

Sells at the Lowest Prices 



Buy your Shoes from JOHN SMITH and from nobody else 

JOHN SMITH 

Another general impression that remains after 
the study of this mass of advertising is that the art- 
work is superior to the copy. The pictures are 
apparently drawn by professionals, while the writing 
is done by amateurs. Many advertisers seem to 
think that anything is good enough for the body of 
the advertisement as long as the headline, or the 
illustration, is clever and effective. The result of 
this disharmony is that it creates advertisements 
that attract, but do not convince. Like a store 



CURRENT ADVERTISING 93 

that has finely dressed show-windows, but which is 
dark and dirty inside, these advertisements are apt 
to catch the eye, but not the trade, of the passing 
public. 

The names, or rather nicknames, that I have 
chosen to describe the various types of advertise- 
ment may be improved from many points of view. 
I have chosen these for the reason that they will be 
easily remembered. They are as follow: 

THE BELL-WETHER ADVERTISEMENT 

This is one of the oldest types and one of the 
most permanent and successful. In the patent 
medicine business it was overdone; and it was not 
always used honestly. Eminent men were paid 
for the use of their names. Also, some eminent 
men became so fond of seeing their names in print 
that they recommended too many articles. This 
has made the public somewhat wary of the testi- 
monial, and it must never be used except from some 
well known person in whom the public has entire 
confidence. The mass of people love to follow a 
bell-wether, but for your own sake you must be 
careful in the selection of bell-wethers. 

When McCormick launched his reaper, his first 
advertisements were of this testimonial type. A 
farmer who had bought a reaper wrote to him and 



94 ADS AND SALES 

said: " My reaper has more than paid for itself 
in one harvest." McCormick at once seized upon 
this phrase and made it the text of his advertising. 
Usually it has been found that when a new invention 
is offered for sale it is greatly helped if some well 
known people will stand as its godfathers. The 
public distrusts what it does not know, and demands 
a background of familiar names. Examples of the 
bell-wether advertisement are: 

Bob Burman, after a 141-miles-an-hour race, 
recommending POLAR I NE. 

Detective Burns recommending SAVAGE revolver. 

Weston, after cross-continent walk, recommending 
HEEL AND TOE WALKING SOX. 

Evanston Public Library instals PIANOLA and 
lending-library of music-rolls. 

A farmer testifies to crop of apples — $1400 worth 
from one and three-fifths acres, on land in UNION 
PACIFIC Railroad region. 

The first three of these advertisements may be 
rated as first-class. Men who stand at the top of 
their professions recommend articles which they 
are competent to judge. The men are well known. 
They are of the highest character, and by many 
are regarded as popular heroes. Every auto racer 
respects Burman. Every detective honors Burns. 
Every long-distance walker imitates Weston. 



CURRENT ADVERTISING 95 

The fourth of these examples is second-class only. 
The Evanston Public Library is not famous. More- 
over, its librarian may have married a sister of the 
Pianola agent, and so forth. And the fifth example 
is no better than third-class. It is from a wholly 
unknown farmer, who may be in debt to the Union 
Pacific, or who may be merely bragging about his 
crop. 

The short of it is that if names are to be used, 
they must be BIG names, not small ones. They 
must be CLEAN names, not smirched ones. And 
they must be EXPERT names, not merely the names 
of unskilled celebrities, who have no reason to know 
the value of the article. When you offer the people 
a bell-wether, pick a good one. 

THE DIGNITY ADVERTISEMENT 

This is a solemn, pompous, my-name-is-enough 
sort of advertisement. It is written wholly from 
the point of view of the advertiser. There is nothing 
to attract or amuse or prove. The type that is used 
is often so indistinct that it is well-nigh invisible. 
There is never a catchy headline, usually no head- 
line at all except the name of the firm. There are 
no explanations. The assumption is that the whole 
public has known since birth the history of the firm 
and the absolutely perfect quality of its goods. 



96 ADS AND SALES 

A few firms — a very few firms — are entitled to 
this style of advertisement. When a corporation 
has lived for fifty years, it has a right to be solemn 
and dignified. It has the license of age. Also, any 
firm that has advertised continuously for ten years 
has a right to assume that the public knows the 
main facts of its business and the quality of its goods. 
But when a young and unknown corporation struts 
before the public eye in the raiment of a dignity 
advertisement, it makes itself absurd. It is an ass 
in a lion's skin, and fools nobody. 

Examples of advertisers who habitually use the 
dignity advertisement, and who have a right to use 
it, are: 

TIFFANY AND Co., three generations in business. 
BlGELOW CARPET Co., seventy-five years. 

Berry Brothers, fifty-two years. 

MOTT IRON WORKS, eighty-four years. 

Walter Baker and Co., one hundred and 

thirty-two years. 

THE MOTHER GOOSE ADVERTISEMENT 

This is the direct opposite of the dignity advertise- 
ment. It is usually written in poetry or in dialect. 
Apparently it is specially designed for eight-year-old 
children only. In most cases it appears in a series 



CURRENT ADVERTISING 97 

of verses, jingling and easy to remember, and which 
tell the adventures of some imaginary person. It is 
more frequently seen in street-cars than in maga- 
zines, and is especially suited to catch the attention 
of people who are not in the humor to read. A 
few of the best known examples are: 

SPOTLESS TOWN jingles, advertising Sapolio. 
SUNNY JlM jingles, advertising Force. 
PHOEBE SNOW jingles, advertising Lackawanna 
Railroad. 

BOY AND GOOSE pictures, advertising Omega Oil. 

Jocular Jinks of Kornelia Kinks, advertis- 
ing Korn-Kinks. 

A finer species of the Mother Goose advertise- 
ment has been appearing recently. Its headline 
is usually a simple question, such as a little child 
might ask, and about some trivial matter. But it 
is very effective. It gives the simplicity of the old- 
fashioned jingle without any loss of dignity. A 
very good specimen was an advertisement of the 
"Ladies Home Journal" announcing an article by 
Belasco. The headline was: 

HOW CAN I MAKE A CAT 

STRETCH ITSELF 

ON THE STAGE EVERY NIGHT? 



98 ADS AND SALES 

THE SPELLBINDER ADVERTISEMENT 

This species is constantly used by the best adver- 
tisers and the worst. It is used by honest men and 
by crooks. It is used to sell the best of goods and 
the most worthless. The sign of it is a headline 
that tells a big fact, or a general truth, or a maxim 
of some kind, but which has no direct relation to the 
goods that are being offered for sale. The headline 
is always irrelevant. It is always a fine-sounding 
phrase, true and forcible, but like the flowers that 
bloom in the spring, it has nothing to do with the 
case. 

The faker on the street-corner who shouts, "This 
is the greatest nation in the world," and forthwith 
proceeds to sell small bottles of water, flavored with 
peppermint, to cure toothache, uses the Spellbinder 
method of advertising. There is no denying that 
this method is effective. It has sold goods since 
the dawn of commerce. It will always sell goods as 
long as the mass of people are illogical and ignorant 
of the nature of a syllogism. But it is a dangerous 
and sophistical type of advertisement. It will not 
stand analysis. As soon as you take hold of it, it 
falls to pieces. It is a mere matter of eloquence, 
without proof or relevancy; and the wonder is that 
so many advertisers of the highest class persist in 



CURRENT ADVERTISING 99 

using it, without taking pains to make it fit the case. 
Examples: 

One Third of your Life is Spent in Sleep, 

Ostermoor Mattress. 

3000 BURGLARS LOOSE, Savage Revolver. 

Good Heating — Quick Renting, American 

Radiator. 

Is your Appearance Worth a Postal? 

Adler Clothes. 

The French Peasant is Richer than the 
Average American, New York Real Estate 

Security. 

The Best Security on Earth is Earth 

ITSELF, American Real Estate Co. 

Numbers Eliminate Chance, Equitable Life 

Assurance Society. 

Quality is Economy, Murphy Varnish Co. 
Don't Grow Old Too Fast, Shredded Wheat Co. 

As anyone can see at a glance, these companies, 
eminent as they are, have no exclusive right to these 
headlines. Their competitors might use them just 
as legitimately. Moreover, there is no good reason 
why such companies, with big facts that belong to 
them and to no one else, should be compelled to go 
to a book of familiar quotations to get headlines. 

A proper use of the Spellbinder advertisement 



100 ADS AND SALES 

was shown recently by the American Woolen Co. 
After making this general statement — AMERICAN 

Men and Women are the Best Dressed 
Individuals in the World — it made a fit use of 

this general fact by stating, " The American Woolen 
Company has done much to make this possible by 
furnishing annually more than fifty million yards 
of cloth at a price that would be impossible on any 
smaller scale of production." 

THE BIG FACT ADVERTISEMENT 

This is one of the most effective types of advertising. 
It is a type that cannot be used by fakers or get- 
rich-quick promoters. Like the Spellbinder type, it 
has a big fact as its headline, but a big fact that 
arises out of its own business. It has a PRIVATE 
fact, not a public one. 

The intent of the Big Fact advertisement is to 
impress the public with the size and reliability of a 
corporation. It does not aim to get immediate 
trade, as much as to lay a basis of confidence. It 
aims to prove that this particular corporation is the 
largest of its kind, and therefore the most satisfactory 
to deal with. 

The public likes to deal at the biggest store. In 
spite of the prosecution of trusts that is just now 
so prevalent, it is undeniably true that the public 



CURRENT ADVERTISING 101 

prefers to deal with a corporation that is fifty years 
old, rather than with a mushroom company that 
has no history. There is in all Americans, at least, 
an ineradicable instinct that favors the superlative 
degree, and it is to this instinct that the Big Fact 
style of advertisement appeals. Examples: 

Reproduction of check paid to heir of John M. 
Carrere, for the sum of $116,000, "The largest 
single accident indemnity ever paid," by the Trav- 
elers Insurance Co. 

84,000 Ingersoll Watches, the capacity of the 
testing-room, by Robt. H. Ingersoll and Bro. 

List of Thirteen Royal users of the Pianola, by 
the Aeolian Co. 

Photo of 366-foot chimney, "the highest in Amer- 
ica, " by Eastman Kodak Co. 

Rags consumed annually by 29 mills are equal to 
3 times the tonnage displacement of the Maure- 
tania, says American Writing Paper Co. 

Total Assets of $486,109,637.98, made public by 
Equitable Life Assurance Society. 

100,000 of its stoves now in use, says Kalamazoo 
Stove Co. 

30,000 Yale time-locks in American banks, says 
Yale & Town Mfg. Co. 

A pair of shoes made every second, by Hamilton 
Brown Shoe Co. 



102 ADS AND SALES 

There is another type of advertisement which is 
akin to this. It is not as convincing, but often very 
effective. It is the making of a big CLAIM instead 
of the announcement of a big fact. For instance, 
the Quaker Oats Co. advertises "3 dishes for 1 cent"; 
the Welsbach Co. advertises that its light will " burn 
5 hours for 1 cent's worth of gas"; the Hup Motor 
Co. asserts that the repair cost of its $750-car amounts 
to only "25 cents a day," and so forth. These 
assertions may or may not be true, so they cannot 
be ranked with facts and figures. 

THE COLLEGE YELL ADVERTISEMENT 

This is one of the most popular, and will probably 
always remain so. It is a catchy slogan, easily 
remembered, and suggestive of the article. The 
popular mind seems to crave these slogans. There 
is no easier way to keep a fact in mind than by 
putting it into tabloid form and making it jingle. 
Presidential elections have been won by good 
slogans and lost by bad ones. "Rum, Romanism, 
and Rebellion" probably kept Blaine out of the 
White House, just as "the full dinner-pail" won the 
contest for McKinley. 

A really well chosen College Yell is the very pith 
of an advertising campaign. It adds a touch of 
enthusiasm and good-humor that is invaluable. 



CURRENT ADVERTISING 103 

Best of all, it is rememberable, which is what nine- 
tenths of the other types of advertisements are not. 
To be first-class, it must be alliterative, rhythmical, 
or fantastic. It must be more than a simple state- 
ment. The following, for instance, are examples 
of the best slogans: 

Don't Travel — Telephone, used by Bell 

Telephone Co. 

THE HAM WHAT Am, used by Armour Co. 

HAMMER THE HAMMER, used by Iver Johnston 
Co. 

A Kalamazoo Direct to you, used by Kala- 
mazoo Stove Co. 
The Road of a Thousand Wonders, used by 

Southern Pacific Railroad. 

The Watch that Made the Dollar Fa- 
mous, used by Ingersol Co. 

Some College Yells are too long to be first-class. 
For example, WHEN YOU THINK OF WRITING, 

Think of Whiting, used by Whiting Paper Co., 

is too clumsy. WHEN WRITING USE WHITING 
would be better. Some do not suggest the article, 
as EVENTUALLY, WHY NOT NOW? used by Wash- 
burn-Crosby Flour Co., or ASK THE MAN WHO 
OWNS ONE, used by Packard Motor Car Co. Some 
have a pretty idea poorly expressed, as THERE IS 



104 ADS AND SALES 

Beauty in Every Jar, used by F. F. Ingram 

Company, in advertising Milkweed Cream. Some 
are incredibly commonplace, such as WHO'S YOUR 
TAILOR? used by E. V. Price Co. And others are 
incredibly awkward, such as FOR SCHOOL LIFE OR 
LIFE'S SCHOOL, used by L. E. Waterman Co., and 

The Watch that's Made for the Majority, 

used by Elgin National Watch Co. 

In advertisements meant for women only, a 
quaint thought, daintily expressed, has often proved 
effective, even though it is not structurally unique, 

such as Have you a Little Fairy in your 

HOME? used by N. K. Fairbank Co., and RUB OUT 

To-night the Wrinkles of To-day, used by 

Pompeian Mfg. Co. A slogan can scarcely be too 
simple or too jingling, if it suggests the advertised 
article, and if it has been established by a long 
series of fact advertisements. 

THE ACREAGE ADVERTISEMENT 

This is the full-page or two-page or sometimes 
six-page advertisement, which does not need to be 
so large to tell its story, but which is made large 
to impress the public. It is the advertisement of 
SIZE. It is the Jumbo of advertisements. Merely 
for the insertion of a single one of these Acreage ads 
an advertiser will pay a sum equal to the whole 




CURRENT ADVERTISING 105 

yearly salary of a United States Senator, and once 
in a while twice as much. 

An Acreage advertisement does not prove that 
the goods are good, but only that the advertiser 
has plenty of money and is willing to spend it. It 
does attract attention and give prestige, somewhat 
as a World's Fair gives prestige to the city that 
holds it. But an advertisement that is big, without 
any special reason for its bigness, is displeasing to 
many people. A magazine page should not be turned 
into a bill-board. 

One Acreage advertisement, for instance, which 
recently occupied two pages of the "Saturday 
Evening Post," contained thirteen words and the 
faces of two men. Six hundred dollars a word! 
Such an advertisement was absurd and harmful. 
It was a degradation of advertising, and the time 
will come when no reputable advertising agent will 
allow his name to be connected with such a vulgar 
space-killer. The truth is that very few advertise- 
ments — not one in ten thousand — are worth two 
pages in any national magazine. It is the very 
essence of advertising efficiency to CONDENSE the 
advertisement — to cut it in two and yet to build 
it so cleverly that it produces the same results. 

Less Space and Better Copy — that is the motif 

of the future. 



106 ADS AND SALES 

THE ART GALLERY ADVERTISEMENT 

This style also uses an unusual amount of space, 
but not offensively. The main thing in it is not 
the copy, but the illustration. It is frankly nothing 
more than a pleasing picture, with as few words as 
possible to remind the reader of the advertiser. 
It is an effective species when used by a well known 
advertiser, not otherwise. No unknown corporation 
can use it. 

Of the eight thousand advertisements that I 
classified, the best Art Gallery advertisement was 
one that was devised by the Prudential Insurance 
Company at the time that the American battlefleet 
made its trip around the world. It was a painting 
of the fleet passing the rock of Gibraltar — the 
usual symbol of the Prudential. Underneath were 
the words — " THE FLEET PROTECTS THE NATION; 

Prudential Life Insurance Protects the 

HOME." This was timely, impressive, patriotic, 
and rememberable. 

Several of the clothing manufacturers, notably 
Hart, Schaffner and Marx, are making use of the 
Art Gallery advertisement, as a relief from the 
perpetual Fashion Plate species. There is the usual 
well dressed young man, with the plaster-cast face, 
but he is drawn into an interesting picture, such as 



CURRENT ADVERTISING 107 

a scene on the Levee, at New Orleans. The Victor 
Talking Machine Co. uses the Art Gallery type to 
show groups of grand opera artists. The railroads 
use it to show the scenery that can be reached by 
their lines. The Pears Soap Co. uses it frequently, 
showing a group of statuary or a remarkably beauti- 
ful child's face. The Cream of Wheat Co. is using 
it in a unique series of paintings that throw a real 
human interest around its products, the story being 
told by the picture and not in words. Colgate and 
Co. used it in one notable instance, when they 
displayed stupendous cans of talcum powder tower- 
ing above the snow-clad Alps. 

THE TRADE-MARK ADVERTISEMENT 

This is very different from the Art Gallery species, 
which is designed mainly to attract and please the 
public. The Trade-Mark ad is written wholly 
from the point of view of the advertiser, not the 
reader. It takes the interest of the public for 
granted. It also takes the quality of its goods for 
granted. It assumes that the public knows about 
the goods and is anxious to buy them, but that some 
insidious competitors are trying to palm off goods 
of inferior quality. To prevent this deception, 
therefore, the advertiser gives the public a certain 



108 ADS AND SALES 

symbol, by means of which the real goods can always 
be identified. 

Thus the Trade-Mark advertisement is of very 
little value when (1) the goods are no better than 
the competitors' goods, and when (2) the public 
is not especially interested. As a rule, this type of 
advertisement should not be used to establish an 
article in popular favor; but can be of much service 
when once the popularity of the goods is established. 
The symbol that is adopted must be simple and re- 
memberable. It must be distinctive and not like half 
a dozen other symbols. And it ought in some way 
to suggest the goods or the name of the corporation. 

H-0 and NABISCO are instances of the best class 
of symbols or trade-names. They are unique and 
suggest the name of the company. HYDEGRADE 
and R & G CORSET suggest the name, but are not 
unique or remember able. UNEEDA, on the con- 
trary, does not suggest the goods or the company, 
but it is unique and has been amazingly successful. 
Others of the same style as UNEEDA are ZOZODONT, 
CREX, ZU Zu, and SAPOLIO. ROYAL, as applied 
to a baking powder, is said to be worth more than 
eight million dollars; but the word itself was acci- 
dentally chosen. So with the symbol REGAL; it 
could have been popularized with less cost if it had 
been a more suitable word. PROPHYLACTIC seems 



CURRENT ADVERTISING 109 

at first sight to be as bad as possible, but it is catchy 
with dentists, who have a fondness for technical 
words. OCCIDENT, as applied to a flour, and 
MYOPIA, as applied to a collar, are inexcusable. 
BLUE LABEL, as applied to preserved goods, is not 
distinctive. Any competitor who advertised a RED 
LABEL would confuse the public. So with the 
Stetson Shoe's RED DIAMOND; any other shoe 
manufacturer may cut down its value by adopting 

a Red Star or a Red Cross. Already a big "A" 

is used as a trade-mark by the American Cigar Co., 
the Alvin Mfg. Co., and the American Writing 
Paper Co. Worse still, the Keystone Watch Case 
Co. advertises three different trade-marks of its 
own; and the Scott & Williams Co. advertises four, 
as though the public had nothing else to do except 
to remember trade-marks. 

THE GUSH ADVERTISEMENT 

The cause of this style of advertisement is a too 
easy flow of poetical language. It is found frequently 
in the Southern States and is effective there. It 
would probably be effective in South America or 
Mexico. But in all northern countries, where there 
is less exuberance of language, it can have little or 
no influence upon the public. 

The Gush species is permissible if there is a uni- 



110 ADS AND SALES 

versal sentimental interest in the advertised article. 
In the pen-picture of a piano, or in the description 
of scenery, a writer may and should be emotional. 
He may legitimately say that "with the Phrasing 
Lever of the Angelus you bring forth the Soul of 
Music, " or he may say that Lake Tahoe is " pure as 
a virgin's tears." There should be more sentiment, 
much more, in advertising. There may even be 
pathos, when pathos is justified. But in the follow- 
ing instances the use of the Gush type of advertise- 
ment was silly and futile, as the goods are not of 
such a nature as to warrant such language: 

"A veritable restorer of recreative and soothing 
potency," used to describe Malt-Nutrine. 

" The mighty Oliver Typewriter 

With Power for every Need." 

" The finest food on earth," used to describe Snider 
Pork and Beans. 

" Man's Greatest Pleasure — His truest gratifica- 
tion, everywhere in the civilized world, is in the use 
of Pears' Soap." 

" Sweet as the lily that blooms in July — light as 
the golden sunbeam — delicious as the fairy-food 
of fancy, are Nabisco Sugar Wafers." 

"Its advertising columns are the show-place of 
the Universe," used to describe the "Cincinnati 
Enquirer." 



CURRENT ADVERTISING 111 

THE DICTIONARY ADVERTISEMENT 

This is somewhat akin to the Gush species, but 
instead of being emotional and rhapsodical, it is 
learned and dignified. It revels in big words — 
abstract words — jaw-breaking words. It is de- 
signed apparently for college professors only. Usually 
it is the work of some very young and very verdant 
writer, who is trying to give his first advertisements 
an air of wisdom and experience. 

In conveying a great thought to a limited number 
of very learned people, this form of advertising is 
permissible. It would be effective in the "North 
American Review" or the "Atlantic Monthly." 
But to reach the mass of people who read the popular 
magazines it is a sheer waste of words and money. 
So far as ninety-nine readers out of every hun- 
dred are concerned, it might as well be printed in 
Sanscrit. 

Possibly, this style may be used to sell encyclo- 
paedias. It was, at any rate, used largely in selling 
the last edition of the ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITAN- 
NICA. Here, for instance, is a sample sentence of 
that advertising: "The lecture-rooms of a Uni- 
versity and the laboratories of an institution of 
research are fountain-heads inaccessible to all but 
a small minority; and, although that minority in- 



112 ADS AND SALES 

eludes students who will in turn become teachers, 
it is not possible that in every part of the English- 
speaking world education of more than the most 
rudimentary kind should be available to all who have 
the intelligence to assimilate it." 

The very able and well sustained advertisements 
of the Bell System of telephony are now and then of 
the Dictionary species. This headline, for example, 
is distinctly of this sort — THE SIXTH SENSE — 

the Power of Personal Projection. In the 

body of this ad the statement is made that the 
Bell telephone "extends your personality to its 
fullest limitations — applies the multiplication table 
to your business possibilities." This kind of lan- 
guage is Choctaw to most people and there is good 
reason to believe that it seldom or never sells goods. 

Still, a national telephone system is a vast thing 
and may require vast language. But there is no 
reason why the Jackson Automobile Co. should 
say that it has been "gradually preempting the 
special prerogatives of the costliest cars," or why the 
Mayhew Furniture Co. should say that "artistic 
fidelity and material integrity are not abstractions 
in the building of Mayhew furniture." 

Least of all should the Dictionary style be used 
in appealing to women. A woman's mind is not 
influenced by abstract reasoning. One striking 



CURRENT ADVERTISING 113 

instance is more effective with her than a natural 
law. One wee little fact that she already knows 
will sway her more powerfully than the latest 
scientific hypothesis. She will pay little attention, 
therefore, when the Armour Co. advertises that 
"the art of Basting is based on certain definite 
fundamental principles of chemical action." Neither 
will she be likely to take quick action, when the 
White Enamel Refrigerator Co. tells her that 
"Infant Mortality Would be Greatly Reduced, if 
all homes were equipped with Bohn Refrigerators." 
She would be much more likely to act if she were 

told — Get a Bohn Refrigerator if you 
don't Want your own Baby to Die. 

THE APRIL FOOL ADVERTISEMENT 

The distinguishing mark of this species is a head- 
line or illustration that has no connection with the 
subject. Its aim is to trick people into taking notice 
of it. Apparently there is nothing in the goods to 
interest the public, so the advertiser throws in a 
picture of the Eiffel Tower or an ostrich — anything 
that happens to be handy — to brighten up his 
advertisement. 

The result is an advertisement that may be very 
catchy and attractive, but that is almost always 
quite worthless as a seller of goods. It does not 



114 ADS AND SALES 

create a strong impression. It does not convince. 
It divides the reader's mind, and the part that is 
interesting is not the part that is of any value. 
Worse still, it gives a shock to the mind. It shows 
you a fine picture of the Eiffel Tower and then, 
when your attention is secured, it says, "April 
Fool! I only want to tell you about the Smith 
brand of shoe-laces." 

An aeroplane, for example, is used to draw buyers 
to Peters' Chocolate. A marching regiment leads 
the way to Colgate's Ribbon Dental Cream. Two 
cats playing checkers remind you of the Ostermoor 
Mattress. The Venus de Milo stands as the sign- 
post of Kellogg's Toasted Corn Flakes. The Statue 
of Liberty holds her torch so that you may see the 
Seaboard Air Line. And a sketch of Noah Webster 
is supposed to lure you into the purchase of a 
Faultless Night Shirt. 

One extraordinary ad of the April Fool type holds 
up (1) a picture of a house that is falling down. 
The headline asks the question (2) "Is your foun- 
dation faulty?" Next comes the statement that 
(3) "Ninety-eight per cent of Life's Failures can be 
Traced to Faulty Foundations." Wandering still 
farther in this confused maze, you find this good 
advice: (4) "Mothers, Build well the Foundations 
of your Children." And finally, you are given a 



CURRENT ADVERTISING 115 

quick jerk from the theoretical to the practical 
and told to give the children (5) "Plenty of Egg- 
o-See." 

Two advertisements appeared lately with the 
headlines THE MAN and THE DOLLAR. These, 
instead of being announcements of a new savings 
bank for men only, as you would naturally suppose, 
were intended to sell the stock of the Consolidated 
Motor Car Co. And a highly moral advertisement 
which carried the headline A LIFE TO BE 

Satisfactory Should be Started Right 

turned out to be an appeal to buy Borden's Con- 
densed Milk. 

Sometimes there is a REAL connection between the 
title and the contents of the advertisement, although 
the two are at first sight quite different. Such are 
once in a while fairly effective. A picture of a 
mother and her two little children, all three at a 
piano and singing, is used to call attention to the 
Travelers Insurance Co. The picture of a pretty 
woman in the case of a watch is used in the same 
way by the Prudential, the aim being to suggest that 
a father should insure his life for the sake of his wife 
and family. A very handsome Wedgwood cheese- 
dish is used to attract the eye to a description of 
Lea & Perrins Sauce, but the two are linked 
together by the reminder that a little of the sauce 



116 ADS AND SALES 

on cheese is delicious. This is legitimate and 
sale-making. 

THE BULLETIN ADVERTISEMENT 

This is a very simple and effective form. It is 
an announcement of some fact that concerns the 
advertiser or his goods. It has the interest and the 
force of news. Usually it is not well written. It 
is too heavy and dignified. But if it were written 
by a first-class reporter, it would be read by almost 
everyone and produce telling results. 

It is a Bulletin ad when the Remington Arms Co. 
announces its ninety-third birthday, or when the 
American Telegraph and Telephone Co. announces 
the cooperation of the Bell telephone and the West- 
ern Union telegraph. It is a Bulletin ad when the 
Eaton-Hurlbut Paper Co. announces the winner of 
a contest in which 30,134 people took part, in which 
$1730 was paid for the best letters on "Eaton's 
Hot-Pressed Vellum." 

Most advertisements of world-tours are of the 
Bulletin species, usually illustrated by a picture of 
the ship or of a scene in a foreign country. When 
Francis H. Leggett & Co. published a telegram sent 
by it to President Taf t, endorsing Wiley as the " great 
champion of pure food, " it used the Bulletin type of 
advertising with good effect. 



CURRENT ADVERTISING 117 

An example of the pompous style of Bulletin, 
which totally spoils the news effect, was shown by 
the National Casket Co. It announced that it 
was about to advertise, so that the public might 
know "how its broad, progressive, enlightening 
policy identifies with National products Funeral 
Directors of highest principle and ability every- 
where." In such an advertisement the news is 
swallowed up in the brag. 

Naturally, this kind of advertising can only be 
used on special occasions. To use it too often is 
to reduce its force. When Frank A. Munsey, for 
instance, printed a Bulletin on the cover-page of 
"Munsey's," announcing that this was the best issue 
of the magazine that he had ever produced, the 
result was electrical. But had he printed a similar 
Bulletin several months later, there would have been 
little result and the effect of the first one would have 
been spoiled. 

Many firms that advertise a new idea, or a new 
commodity, fail to put their advertisement into the 
form of a Bulletin. They lose the news effect, to 
which they are entitled. The Hoggson Brothers, 
for example, in their very well written ads, fail to 
make the full use of the novelty of their service. 
There is news and novelty in the fact that one firm 
can plan, build, decorate, and furnish your house, 



118 ADS AND SALES 

yet the ad writer of the firm assumes that the Hogg- 
son method is well known and commonplace. 



THE HEART-THROB ADVERTISEMENT/ 

Here we have an appeal to some tender emotion — 
the love of the mother for her child, for instance, or 
the love of a young man for his bride. It is wholly 
an appeal to feeling and is invariably illustrated by 
a picture of sentiment. In advertisements designed 
for women this form of advertising is sure and effec- 
tive. It should be used much oftener than it is. 

One of the best ads of this type is the one used 
by Kellogg s Toasted Corn Flakes — a picture of a 
sweet-faced girl clasping a sheaf of corn, and this 
headline — THE SWEETHEART OF THE CORN. 
And one of the silliest ads of this type is one used by 
the same firm, which shows a picture of a simpering 
girl, a cluster of flowers, and a package of Corn 
Flakes, with this headline — THREE DAISIES. 

The Heart-Throb species is used with fine taste 
in the advertising of Jell-O. The illustrations by 
an artist of sentiment, Rose O'Neill, with faces that 
are real and fascinating, show what can be done in 
the way of making advertisements of human inter- 
est. Some of the ads of the Edison Phonograph, 
too, showing a family group listening in a darkened 



CURRENT ADVERTISING 119 

room to the music of the Phonograph, have a very 
effective sentimental interest. 

We find the Heart-Throb style used not only by 
the Mellins Food Co. and the Springfield Metallic 
Casket Co., which seem to be rightfully entitled 
to it, but also by other companies that sell non- 
sentimental goods. The American Radiator Co., 
for instance, pictures a newly married couple stand- 
ing inside a wedding ring and gazing at a radiator. 
The Anderson Electric Car Co. shows one of its 
cars outside a church, just as the bridal couple are 
about to enter it. The Waterman Co. has even 
thrown a glamour of sentiment around its pen by 
portraying it as the "go-between," having "the fel- 
low" on one side of it and "the girl" on the other; 
each is writing to the other with a Waterman pen. 
And the Washburn-Crosby Co. comes close to 
having a Heart-Throb advertisement when it prints 
a picture of a pretty child, with long curls, using 
"real flour" to make her cake. 

THE GLAD HAND ADVERTISEMENT 

As the Heart-Throb style is mainly for women, 
so this style is mainly for men. It is anecdotal, 
conversational, and often slangy. There is no 
dignity in it and very little information, but it looks 
interesting and sociable. Its language is breezy 



120 ADS AND SALES 

and convivial; and it is such a relief from the 
ordinary dull and stale advertisement that it is 
often very effective and a quick sale-maker. 

Sometimes it is no more than a funny story. The 
Colgate Co. tells of the small boy who said to the 
dentist that he wished the tube of dental cream were 
three feet long. The Gillette Co. tells of an inci- 
dent on a sleeping-car, when an unfortunate young 
bridegroom had to go for three days without a shave. 
And the Red Raven Co. gives a conversation be- 
tween a father and son, the son having been at a 
banquet the night before, and escaped the after- 
effects by taking a dose of Red Raven. 

This style seems to be especially popular in the 
advertising of tobacco and cigars. The R. A. 
Patterson Tobacco Co. has been using it to a slight 
extent in the selling of its "Lucky Strike" tobacco, 
getting the Glad Hand effect mainly from the 
illustrations. The R. J. Reynolds Co. has been 
using it to the fullest extent, pouring out such a 
spatter of slangy talk as has seldom been seen in 
any national publication. Several of its headlines 
were as follows: 

Well, Well, this Sure is Stackin* up 
against a Good Thing. 
Here's Tobacco that Sure Strikes 13. 



CURRENT ADVERTISING 121 

Old Man, Here's the Grandest Tobacco 
I Ever did Smoke! 

There is a decent limit, of course, to this sort of 
thing. An advertisement can be sociable without 
telling you to " beat it while your shoes are good to 
the corner smokery and swap ten cents for a joy 
smoke. " 



THE GENTLE RAIN ADVERTISEMENT 

This is a most admirable and effective species. 
It is not startling nor unique nor powerful; but 
neither is it dull nor uninteresting. It does its 
work quietly, without breaking any records or mak- 
ing any fuss. It must appear often to produce good 
results. A single insertion is of little value. Used 
persistently it is sure to create business. It is like 
the GENTLE RAIN, not like the heavy downpour, 
and it will always produce a crop if it comes down 
often enough. 

This class of advertisement usually portrays some 
better way — some finer convenience. It slowly 
builds up desire in the minds of the readers. It 
comes to people from their own point of view. It 
does not bore you with shop-talk or try to din a 
trade-mark into your ears. It just shows you 



122 ADS AND SALES 

something nice and makes you want it. It has often 
taken a luxury and taught the nation to regard it 
as a necessity of refined living. 

The advertisements of the Standard Sanitary Mfg. 
Co. are excellent specimens of this sort. Its pic- 
tures of dainty bathrooms, with ladies in pretty 
night-dresses and kimonos, having their hair dressed, 
have been irresistibly attractive to feminine readers. 
Almost all the recent advertisements of the Ivory 
Soap Co., too, have been of the Gentle Rain type. 
In one ad a lady is shown cleaning her piano with 
this soap. In another she is scouring a white parasol. 
In a third she is renovating a soiled pair of kid gloves, 
and in a fourth she is washing the baby. 

The Gentle Rain type teaches people more luxu- 
rious habits. The General Electric Co. shows a 
picture of a man sleeping soundly on an August 
night, because of an electric fan on his bureau. 
The Macey Co. paints a series of well arranged 
parlors, each having as a central feature a Macey 
Book Cabinet. The Western Union lures you into 
the Night Letter habit by a series of wife-and-family 
sketches. And under the mild but steady influence 
of this species of advertising, the American public 
is slowly learning to buy fireless cookers, electric 
flatirons, vacuum cleaners, piano players, phono- 
graphs, etc. 



CURRENT ADVERTISING 123 

THE LINGO ADVERTISEMENT 

This is the sort that belongs in a trade paper, if 
it belongs anywhere. It is generally not illustrated 
and its copy is all shop-talk — the jargon of that 
one corporation or of the trade. It does not belong 
in any popular magazine and has no interest of any 
kind for the general public. It has the appearance 
of being written by the engineer or the bookkeeper. 
It is always prosy, technical, and packed with 
self-praise. 

The name of the article or of the company is 
repeated over and over, in these advertisements, 
as though it were a fetich. In one Lingo ad, for 
example, used by the Burroughs Adding Co., its 
name is repeated seventeen times; and in one page 
advertisement of Mayhew Furniture, the name 
Mayhew is repeated THIRTY-TWO times. 

The writer of the Lingo ad never thinks of his 
audience. His aim is to satisfy the technical expert 
of his own firm, apparently. Speaking to the 
readers of "Munsey's," for instance, the Dodge Mfg. 
Co. recommends its "Dodge Standard Iron Split 
Pulleys with Interchangeable Bushings." And the 
Hupmobile Co., speaking to the readers of the 
"Saturday Evening Post," announces that its cars 
have "four pinions on the differential," "adjust- 



124 ADS AND SALES 

able ball housing for universal joint," and that its 
"radius rods have square lock nuts on transmission 
ends." 

Needless to say, the Lingo ad is not worth its 
cost — usually not one- tenth its cost. It is a 
misfit. It is not really an advertisement at all, 
but only a mess of shop-talk, hashed to the proper 
size by men who have no conception of the nature 
or function of an advertisement. 

THE CATALOGUE ADVERTISEMENT 

This is an improvement upon the Lingo species, 
as it is always illustrated with a picture of the goods ; 
and as it generally has descriptive matter only, it 
has the appearance of having been taken literally 
from a trade catalogue. It has no fads and frills. 
It is the simplest of the simple and the plainest of 
the plain. 

An immense number of advertisements are of 
this nature. Most ads of silverware, tools, engines, 
boots, shirts, collars, garters, and even kodaks and 
furniture, are apt to be of the Catalogue variety. 
There is no valid reason why this should be so, as 
this form of advertising is not very effective. It 
reaches few except those who are already inclined 
to buy. But it persists because it is easy to make. 
It has the negative virtues. And for those who are 



CURRENT ADVERTISING 125 

afraid of originality and cleverness, it seems to be 
highly satisfactory. 

It is one of the oddities of present-day advertising 
that able men of business, careful about all other 
expenses, are so wasteful in paying money for these 
inefficient advertisements. No ad seems to be too 
uninteresting, too crude, too trivial, to be scattered 
abroad in dozens of magazines, at enormous expense. 
There are no worth-while results from these home- 
made advertisements. They cannot compete with 
the work of professionals. They survive, not be- 
cause they are in any sense fit, but because there 
are still many business men who have no appreciation 
of the possibilities of advertising. 

THE CARTOON ADVERTISEMENT 

Here we may see advertising of the highest quality. 
Here we have, not a mere heap of raw materials, 
but an attempt to shape the raw materials into a 
pictorial form that is attractive and easily remem- 
bered. This type of advertisement cannot be made 
by the engineer or the bookkeeper or one of the 
clerks. It can only be made by a man of imagina- 
tion. At its best it can only be made by an adver- 
tising genius. 

To make a large idea simple and noticeable, 
there is no other species of publicity that can com- 



126 ADS AND SALES 

pare with the Cartoon. Its effect upon the public 
mind is tremendous. Cartoons have won elections, 
changed national policies, overthrown political 
leaders, and deflected the whole national current 
of thought. Let the cartoonists in any self-govern- 
ing nation unite for one month in assailing the exist- 
ing government, and that government will be 
overthrown. 

The power of the Cartoon is not yet fully recog- 
nized in advertising circles. It is more often used 
merely as a picture than as an appeal and an argu- 
ment. It is not as confidently relied upon as it 
can be. Advertisers of the old-fashioned type do 
not take it seriously, and often prefer a dull and 
worthless page of shop-talk to a clever and convin- 
cing Cartoon. 

One of the simplest kinds of Cartoon advertise- 
ments is the picture of a blackboard, on which a 
fact or sum is displayed. This is crude, yet it is 
used by the salesmen of Peters' Chocolate and the 
Gillette Razor. Another very simple kind is the 
picture of the article itself, with one or more people 
pointing out its good qualities. This primitive 
type is widely used. It is better than the Catalogue 
species, as it adds a trifle of human interest to the 
picture. The Singer Sewing Machine Co. pictures 
a machine, with its lady owner displaying its handi- 



CURRENT ADVERTISING 127 

ness to a visitor. The Warner Auto-Meter Co. shows 
an automobile with a bystander pointing to the 
Warner Meter. The Standard Oil Co. has one that 
is slightly better than this, to advertise Polarine. 
It shows an automobile, then, following an arrow 
pointer, an auto engine, then a picture of a cylinder, 
and finally an oil-can. The idea conveyed by this 
series of four pictures is that you can trace many 
automobile troubles back to the oil-can, and there- 
fore ought to use the best quality of oil. 

A better grade of the Cartoon ad is made by 
showing the article itself, but with some fanciful 
illustrative idea added to it. The Snider Preserve 
Co., for instance, has an athletic young girl drawn 
on top of a pork-and-beans can. The Abbott-Detroit 
Motor Co. has a picture of its car literally spanning 
a map of the United States. And the Victor Co. 
has a photo of one of its machines, into which are 
woven the faces of twenty-eight opera singers. 

Sometimes the article itself is used in a fanciful 
way. The Smith Premier Co. has a picture of a 
globe, on which the continents are constructed by 
the grouping of big and little typewriters, the head- 
line being — " WORLD-WIDE DISTRIBUTION." The 
American Telephone and Telegraph Co. shows a 
Bell System sign, with the headline — " THE SIGN- 
BOARD of Civilization." And the Burroughs 



128 ADS AND SALES 

Adding Machine Co. has a very effective picture of 
a mass of letters and papers falling from a desk and 
being caught by an adding machine. Its headline 

is — "Shift this Burden to the Burroughs." 

The higher types of Cartoon ads are those that 
do not give a picture of the article itself, but a 
cartoon that tells the IDEA of the article, from the 
point of view of the public. The Ostermoor Co. 
shows a row of people walking to business, half of 
them bright-faced and the others tired and sleepy. 
Underneath is the head-line — "PICK OUT THE 

Ostermoor Sleepers." The Peck- Williamson Co. 

shows "the Ghosts of Winter" being chased away 
by the thought of an Underfeed Heating System. 
And the Postum Cereal Co., which is especially fond 
of cartoons, shows a lighthouse that warns human 
ships away from the rocks of coffee. 

THE EYE-KILLER ADVERTISEMENT 

This is a favorite among advertisers who prefer 
to waste money rather than to get help from an 
advertising expert. It is distinguished by (1) an 
abundance of matter in very small type; (2) white 
type on a black surface, or (3) an obscuring of the 
lettering to secure a decorative effect. 

The makers of this sort of advertising forget that 
the first duty of an ad is to be SEEN. It must be 



CURRENT ADVERTISING 129 

noticed and understood, otherwise it is not an 
advertisement, but only a contribution to the 
magazine business. The type in an ad should be 
as large and as plain as possible. Fancy types are 
artistic mistakes. Not one person in a million is a 
type collector. An advertisement should be easy 
to read, and it should enable a reader to get at a 
glance the gist of its meaning. 

Some ads of the Eye-Killer species look as if the 
advertiser had made a bet with the printer that a 
certain great volume of stuff could be jammed into 
a certain space. The National Boat and Engine Co., 
for instance, had a two-page ad which was pyramided 
in the following way. First there was a wash draw- 
ing which covered four-fifths of the space. Nine 
photos were thrown on this. A coupon filled up one 
corner. Then, on top of the whole aggregation, were 
eight hundred and thirty-nine words of copy. All 
this in a space eight by eleven inches! Plainly, 
what this company had in mind was not an ad, but 
a book. 

The Oliver Typewriter Co. in an advertisement 
that eulogizes its "Printype," as being "restful to 
eyesight," crams seven hundred and fifty-eight words 
and two illustrations into one regular-size page. 
Two New York merchants — Tiffany's, and Lord 
and Taylor — make a fad of small and obscure type, 



130 ADS AND SALES 

under the impression that in this way they obtain 
dividends of dignity. The Shredded Wheat Co. has 
been showing an impressionistic composite photo of 
its factory and Niagara Falls. This effect might 
be secured by an advertising man who was also an 
artist; but it cannot be obtained by a printer and a 
photographer. 

Quite a few advertisers are partial to white letter- 
ing on a black surface, although any optician will 
tell you that this makes hard reading for the eyes. 
The John Church Co. frequently uses white type in 
the advertising of its Everett piano. So does the 
Shaw Stocking Co. in its endeavors to sell " Shawknit 
Socks," and the Globe- Wernicke Co. in the market- 
ing of bookcases. The J. M. Lyon Co. had a white- 
type ad of silverware which I could not read at a 
distance of fourteen inches. Pearline, too, is actually 
expecting the public to read a series of half-page ads 
that are white-typed on a light gray background. 

THE GUARANTEE ADVERTISEMENT 

This species has become quite numerous in recent 
years, although it is not a new device. McCormick 
used the Guarantee in advertising his first reapers, 
seventy years ago. The department stores led the 
way, in taking goods back that did not suit; and 
to-day a large number of merchants make a general 



CURRENT ADVERTISING 131 

offer in national magazines to send goods on approval 
and to guarantee that the goods will be satisfactory. 

This can be done with much less risk than you 
would naturally expect. The average man or 
woman is honest. Joseph Fels once told me that 
he had sent out more than two million cakes of soap, 
each with a slip inside the wrapper, offering the 
money back if the soap failed to do its work; and 
only three customers came back for the money. 
He investigated these three cases and found that 
one was a newly arrived immigrant, who thought 
herself entitled to the soap as a present from the 
grocer; the second was a child, who got the money 
back as a joke, and the third was a thief. 

The Guarantee advertisement means that the 
merchant trusts both his goods and the public. 
It is the most daring of all ads and one of the signs 
that business is on a higher plane, morally, than any 
other activity of man. No preacher offers the pew-- 
rent back to anyone who does not like the sermon. 
No university offers the fees back in case its instruc- 
tion proves to be of no practical value. And no 
public official offers to resign in case he proves to be 
incompetent. 

But the J. R. Keim Co. ventures to say, speaking 
to anybody in the United States, " If any fault 
develops in any Shackamaxon fabric at any time, 



132 ADS AND SALES 

we will make it good." The Holeproof Hosiery Co. 
says to everybody: "Here, buy a pair of our sox. 
Wear them six months. If there is a hole in them, 
bring them back and we'll give you a new pair." 
The United Roofing & Mfg. Co. gives an insurance 
bond with every roll of its Congo roofing, obliging 
itself to give a new roll if there is less than ten years' 
wear. The Ostermoor Co. captures customers by 
offering "thirty nights free trial" of its mattresses. 
The Regal Shoe Co. varies the method by giving 
a "Specifications Tag" with every pair of shoes, 
guaranteeing that the materials used are of a certain 
quality. 

Even ready-made clothes are now guaranteed to 
" fit, satisfy, and please, " by the Royal Tailors. Even 
trunks, which are at the mercy of highly skilled 
baggage-smashers, are sold with a certificate of 
guarantee, by the Neverbreak salesman. And one 
confident firm in Buffalo is actually offering its 
Barcalo beds with a guarantee of thirty-five years' 
service. 

THE HALL OF FAME ADVERTISEMENT 

Here we find that the advertiser, too impatient to 
wait for the verdict of posterity, has given us a 
photo of himself. He does not exactly say " My face 
is my fortune," but he does say " look at my face and 



CURRENT ADVERTISING 133 

you will buy my goods." In spite of the fact that 
this species of advertising is universally used by 
fake doctors and swindling promoters, there are 
several highly reputable advertisers who have made 
it their favorite method of publicity. 

In a few instances the Hall of Fame ad is the best 
suited and most efficient. Those who claim to show 
a royal road to beauty or strength are naturally 
expected to appear before the public. A Woodbury, 
or a Sandow, or a Susanna Cocroft are expected to 
come out in front of the footlights. 

Some very old and well known corporations could 
use this form of advertising with good effect. Tif- 
fany's, for instance, is proud of "three generations 
in business." Why not show the photos of the three 
Tiffanys? This would be interesting and dignified. 
The "Saturday Evening Post" makes good use of 
the face of Benjamin Franklin at the head of its 
editorial page. The photos of Disston, McCormick, 
Howe, Hoe, Oliver, Steinway, Chickering, and other 
pioneers of industry might well be shown by the 
corporations that represent those men to-day. It 
may, perhaps, be taken as a safe rule that the 
photo of a LIVING man should not be shown, except 
on some special occasions. Neither is there any 
apparent reason why the face of a bald-headed man 
should sell shoes; nor why a fat man's face should 



134 ADS AND SALES 

sell chewing-gum; nor a fiercely mustached face 
should sell talcum powder. If the same amount of 
money had been spent on appropriate trade-marks, 
the sales would have been larger. 

THE STRAIGHT TALK ADVERTISEMENT 

This is the species in which the advertiser speaks 
to the public in the first person singular. He says: 
"I want you to know about my goods and how I 
make them." He tells the inside facts about his 
business and his methods. He does not merely 
brag. He talks reasonably. He plainly aims at 
giving you a fair idea of a fair business. 

This type of advertising, at its best, is very effi- 
cient. It CONVINCES. It does more than make a 
good impression. It is so direct, so personal, so 
urgent, that it is apt to create immediate business. 
It is an especially fine method of advertising for 
retailers to use in local publications, as the famous 
"Tom" does in Chicago. But experience has shown 
that it will bring results in national magazines. 
The public loves to be talked to directly and con- 
fidentially. 

The greatest danger that befalls the straight 
talk ad is boastfulness. How to recommend your 
own goods without bragging — that is the problem. 
It is better to understate than to overstate. It is 



CURRENT ADVERTISING 135 

better to say " only three breakages last year " 
than to say " not one breakage last year." The 
Chalmers-Detroit Motor Co. tells the public that 
it made nine per cent last year, and that the 
average cost of repairs per car for the year was 
$2.44. The Spencer Heater Co. frankly says, 
n Our heater probably costs more than any other 
heater, but — ." The Enoch Morgans Sons Co. 
shows the public the instructions it gives to its sales- 
men of Sapolio. Jones, the sausage man of Fort 
Atkinson, Wisconsin, prints a photo of his farm and 
tells you the names of several of his famous cus- 
tomers. Macbeth admits that he makes poor lamp- 
glasses sometimes, but says that he does not put his 
name on them. All these are instances of the straight 
talk ad in its proper use. 

THE EXHIBIT ADVERTISEMENT 

This is an advertisement built around a picture, 
and the picture is in itself an evidence of the value 
of the goods. It is a very efficient type of adver- 
tising. It is attractive. Often there is a story in 
the picture. It is convincing. You can see the 
proofs right before your eyes. And a single inser- 
tion will often bring very profitable results. 

It is an exhibit ad, for instance, when the Reed & 
Barton Co. shows the "Roosevelt Cup," which was 



136 ADS AND SALES 

the American trophy at the Jamestown yacht races, 
or when the Locomotive Co. shows the trophy that 
one of its cars won at Philadelphia, or when the 
0' Sullivan Co. shows an amateur advertisement of 
Rubber Heels that won first prize in a contest. 

The Ansco Co., to advertise its films, shows a 
sample picture taken by an Ansco film on a rainy 
day. The Barrett Mfg. Co., to advertise its Tar via 
road covering, shows a series of pictures of tarviated 
roads in different States. The Standard Paint Co., 
to advertise its Ruber oid, shows a Ruberoid-roofed 
building which stood uninjured, while other build- 
ings on three sides of it were burned. The Southern 
Cypress dealers show many pictures to prove that 
Cypress is the best all-round wood on the market. 
The White Co., to advertise their motor trucks, 
show a long line of them standing outside some well 
known store. And so forth. All these are fair 
examples of the exhibit ad at its best. 

THE BIG IDEA ADVERTISEMENT 

This is a high-grade brand of advertising for high- 
grade people only. It consists mainly of a very 
comprehensive idea, such as would naturally occur 
to a man of deep thought, when he considered the 
goods that are being offered for sale. Such an ad 
gives prestige. It does not make any immediate 



CURRENT ADVERTISING 137 

business; but it dignifies the article that is being 
advertised. It is not especially effective in the light, 
frivolous sort of magazines. In the main it is for 
men and women over forty years of age. 

The best instances of this type may be seen in the 
advertisements of the American Telephone and Tele- 
graph Co. This remarkable series has held up, one 
after another, the Big Ideas that are suggested by a 
national telephone system. It has put the whole 
matter of telephony upon a higher level, in the minds 
of the mature men of the nation. In one of these 
ads, for instance, the headline is— "THE ORBIT OF 

Universal Service," and it is shown that the 

total distance travelled by Bell Telephone messages 
is greater — forty times greater — than the distance 
travelled by the earth in its yearly belt-line around 
the sun. Other typical headlines in this series are: 

In Touch with his World. 
Finder of Men. 

Civilization — from Signal Fire to Tele- 
phone. 

The Remington Typewriter Co. used the Big Idea 
advertisement when it pictured its typewriter as 
"woven into the fabric of trade." And the Smith 
Premier Co. also used it under the headline, "THE 

World gets what it Asks for," showing that 



138 ADS AND SALES 

the demand for greater speed has produced the 
Olympic, the "Twentieth Century Limited," the 
Telephone, and the Smith Premier typewriter. 



These twenty-five varieties will account for almost 
all the advertisements in the national magazines. 
They are not intended to include the advertising in 
street-cars or on bill-boards. The latter are of a 
different nature and require a separate investi- 
gation. 

These various styles of advertising may be con- 
densed into three main classes: 

(1) Advertisements written from the standpoint 
of the ADVERTISER. 

(2) Advertisements written from the standpoint 
of the GOODS. 

(3) Advertisements written from the standpoint 
of the PUBLIC. 

Those of the FIRST class are the least efficient, and 
those of the THIRD are the most efficient. The 
FIRST says to the public, BUY YOUR GLOVES 
FROM ME. The SECOND says, THESE GLOVES 
ARE THE BEST. And the THIRD says, CUT DOWN 

your Glove Bill. 

The ideal advertisement, if I may use one last 
illustration, is like a HARPOON. It has a sharp 



CURRENT ADVERTISING 139 

point. It is thrown at the right instant. It is 
aimed at the right place. It hits. It sticks. It 
pulls. It lands the thing it was aimed at. At the 
least cost, and with the least effort, it does the work. 

That is efficiency. 



CHAPTER TEN 

THE FUTURE OF ADVERTISING 

THERE will be more advertisements in the 
future, not fewer; and they will be better, 
not worse. Five years ago we thought that 
the consolidation of industries would greatly de- 
crease the quantity of advertising. We believed 
that advertising was based wholly on competition; 
and most of the big consolidations thought so too. 

But the events of the last few years have made us 
more confident as to the future of advertising. We 
see now that it is not based on competition. We 
see now that even if every industry evolves into a 
monopoly, the monopolies will still have to adver- 
tise to retain the confidence and goodwill of the 
public. 

Our big business men have recently discovered a 
very startling fact. They have found that while a 
little corporation MAY advertise, a large corpora- 
tion MUST. As soon as any corporation masters 
its competitors and controls its output, the public 

is afraid of it. All the irresponsible writers and 

140 



FUTURE OF ADVERTISING 141 

talkers in the country begin at once to abuse and 
torment it. To save its life, it has to be sociable 
and friendly. Like the big elephants in the Zoo, it 
has to eat peanuts and do tricks, to show everybody 
that it has no enmity to the human race. 

As well might a colony of ants build their nest in 
a public roadway, and expect to prosper, as for a 
corporation to hope to monopolize a public necessity 
and yet remain dumb and mysterious about its 
policies. As compared with the nation, the biggest 
corporation is no more than an ants' nest. Even 
the Standard Oil Company has only one two-hun- 
dredth part of our national wealth. And just as 
Thomas Jefferson destroyed American shipping, just 
as Andrew Jackson destroyed the United States 
Bank, so the political leaders of our day will 
destroy any corporation that has brought upon 
itself the special hatred of the public. 

Most of the big corporations, very likely, have 
learned their lesson. They will advertise and, what 
is more, they will, by their great wealth and their 
spirit of efficiency, improve the quality of adver- 
tising. They will give experts a chance to do the 
best that can be done. There will no longer be any 
limit to the quality of an advertisement, except the 
limit of human skill. 

Already the Equitable Life Assurance Company 



142 ADS AND SALES 

has begun the habit of printing, as an advertisement 
in national magazines, its annual report. Other 
corporations will follow suit, now that many of them 
have more than twenty-five thousand shareholders. 
A Western Senator, too, recently secured his own 
election to Congress by a campaign of self-advertise- 
ment. This is a significant straw to show us which 
way the advertising wind is blowing. Now that 
political machines have grown to be unpopular, 
every candidate for office is being compelled to make 
his appeal directly to the voters, and there is no 
way to do this so effectively as by advertising. As 
to whether this political advertising will do more 
harm than good is another matter. The gain in 
quantity will probably be more than offset by the 
loss in quality, as the standards of the officeholder 
are invariably lower than those of the manufacturer 
and the merchant. 

There will be more advertising by cities. The 
surprising results that Buffalo, Kansas City, Dallas, 
Des Moines, Memphis, and other cities have se- 
cured through advertising are stirring up imitators. 
These pioneer cities have learned that a series of 
advertisements, displaying their local advantages, 
is not only effective in attracting new people, but also 
in spurring up and harmonizing their own citizens. 

The various States, too, will probably begin to 



FUTURE OF ADVERTISING 143 

advertise. Iowa and Florida, for example, would 
be greatly benefited by a campaign of self-advertis- 
ing. Iowa needs publicity just at this time, because 
it is the only State that has lost in population. And 
Florida needs publicity because it is the least known 
and most misunderstood State in the Union. 

As for international advertising, we have scarcely 
begun to think of it. But we make fully four hun- 
dred millions of dollars in profits on our foreign 
trade, which is a good beginning. No doubt, if we 
spent two weeks' profits every year on world-adver- 
tising, we could make much more. What we sell to 
foreign nations at present is the fruit of the soil, not 
the product of the factory. Only TWO per cent of 
our manufactured goods are sold abroad. 

The great factories of the Eastern seaboard are 
closer to Europe than they are to Texas; and re- 
ciprocal trade is now the ideal of all progressive 
nations. We may, therefore, expect to see a vast 
expansion of foreign commerce, with the advertising 
expert preparing the way. 

Some sort of advertisements are now known in all 
parts of the world. There are advertising boards 
at the very gates of the Emperor's palace, both in 
Berlin and in Vienna. Even in Tokio, at the doors 
of the temples, the towels that hang at the sacred 
fountains have advertisements printed upon each 



144 ADS AND SALES 

end. And there is no doubt that as the outside 
markets gradually open to American goods, our 
advertising men will be able to stimulate trade and 
raise the standards of living in foreign nations, just 
as they have done at home. 

Bear in mind that there was not even a NATIONAL 
market for American goods until twenty-five years 
ago. There was no transcontinental railroad until 
1869. There was no national magazine, of large 
circulation, until a dozen years ago. Who, then, 
can tell what will be accomplished in international 
commerce by the time that your baby boy, now 
lying in the cradle, shall have become a voter? 

In the United States advertising has already 
evolved from Chance to System, and it is about to 
evolve from System to Efficiency. It has developed 
from noise to sense, and from humbug to sincerity. 
Not many years ago the motto of the advertising 
world was that cynical jest of Ouida's: "There is 
nothing that you may not get people to believe, if 
you will only tell it to them loud enough and often 
enough." This year the best applauded motto at 
the annual convention of Ad Men was — " Tell the 
truth." 

There are some advertising experts who say that 
the master-word of the future is STRATEGY. Pos- 
sibly they may be right, but strategy must mean 



FUTURE OF ADVERTISING 145 

something more than a circumvention of the public. 
The very word strategy has a flavor of trickery 
and war. It means that you have got the better 
of someone, by superior smartness. And so it is 
not as appropriate an ideal as Efficiency, in a 
nation that is shifting from competition to co- 
operation. 

Whether we call it Strategy or Efficiency, matters 
little. But the thing we want in the advertising 
of the future is a BETTER way to do what we are 
doing now. When Howe put the eye of the needle 
in the point of the needle, he found a better way. 
When McCormick hitched a team of horses to a 
reciprocating scythe, he found a better way. When 
Mergenthaler created a machine by means of which 
type can be made instead of set, he found a better 
way. When Westinghouse used air instead of iron 
chains to operate the brakes of railroad trains, he 
found a better way. And so, in the advertising 
world, what we may expect in the near future is a 
period of inventiveness. BETTER WAYS OF DOING 
THE SAME OLD THINGS — that is the motif of the 
future. 

There are once in a while big business facts that 
must be expressed in some novel and striking way. 
For instance, the New York Telephone Company 
began in 1910 a lavish campaign of improvement in 



146 ADS AND SALES 

the city of Buffalo, and wanted to let the Buffalonians 
know what it was doing, in some way so that every- 
body would really take notice. I happened to be 
called in as an expert, and suggested that for the next 
six weeks all payments should be made in NEW 
MONEY. The Company was paying out at that 
time more than four thousand dollars a day. This 
amount, put out for six weeks, would compel every- 
one in the city to notice the new money; and I had 
it paid out in small bills, so that it would travel 
faster. In making change the Company also paid 
out new silver and fresh crisp bills, so that at the 
end of six weeks fully two hundred thousand dol- 
lars had been put in circulation. The new money 
was everywhere. It was very conspicuous, for the 
reason that there is very little money in actual cir- 
culation in any city. There is less than forty dollars 
per capita in the nation, and nine-tenths of it is 
locked up. Then, when the people of Buffalo were 
ripe and ready for an explanation, I flashed a bulle- 
tin in the six daily papers of the city — HAVE YOU 

Noticed the New Money? The effect was 

electrical. The whole city, from newsboys to 
bankers, got the idea, and none were offended at 
the way in which it had been told to them. This 
strategy, as it may fairly be called, shows what 
may be done, and done for very little cost, if only 



FUTURE OF ADVERTISING 147 

a BETTER WAY of conveying the idea can be 
invented. 

The advertisements of the future will not be so 
monotonous. There is no good reason why they 
should be. There is no reason why an advertiser 
should perpetually tootle on two or three notes, as 
though he were playing the bagpipes. There is no 
reason why shop-talk must be the official language 
of the advertising agencies. 

The business world is sparkling with romance 
and adventure. There is nothing wonderful in the 
fairy-tales of Arabia that cannot be equalled in 
any department store. Talk about a camel going 
through the eye of a needle! Even if it could, that 
would be no more wonderful than the miracle of 
sending a whole grand opera through the POINT of 
a needle. Hans Christian Andersen made several 
generations laugh at the imaginary talk of a little 
tin soldier; but how much more wonderful is the 
little tin disk in your telephone, which can really 
talk — which can talk all languages — and when you 
use it for an ear, can hear another voice that is 
fifteen hundred miles away. 

The field of advertising is as comprehensive as the 
field of human nature. There is scarcely any limit 
to the raw materials of advertising, and the sellers 
of the future will take advantage of this. Already 



148 ADS AND SALES 

the playwrights and novelists and short-story writers 
have discovered these raw materials, but the writers 
of advertisements have not. They have stood 
dumb and indifferent while mere entertainers 
filched away the choicest facts. This abnormal 
condition of things will not probably continue, and 
we will not always be compelled to admit that 
there is no advertisement of automobiles that is 
as interesting as the Williamson novels, no adver- 
tisement of lumber as powerful as the stories of 
Stewart Edward White, and no advertisement of a 
piano as gripping as Belasco's "Music Master." 

When Wilhelm Ostwald, the most eminent of Ger- 
man chemists, paid a visit to the United States 
several years ago, I asked him what was his atti- 
tude towards the future of chemistry. He replied, 
" My attitude is just this — if I should hear to-morrow 
morning that some chemist has created a living 
thing, I will not be surprised." It was a noble 
answer, but not too noble to apply also to the future 
of the advertising profession. 

Here, too, there will be great inventions and dis- 
coveries. We may not be able to create life, or to 
make two blades of grass grow where one grew be- 
fore; but we can revivify dead industries and make 
one dollar do what two did before. No matter how 
great the advertising problems of the future may be, 



FUTURE OF ADVERTISING 149 

no matter if they call for the pen of a Kipling, the 
heart of a Dickens, and the brain of a Harriman, 
somebody, somewhere, will rise to meet them. 
And when they are met, none of us will be 
surprised. 



CHAPTER ELEVEN 

PUBLIC OPINION 

WHEN public opinion is friendly, a cor- 
poration travels on an easy down-grade 
towards success. When it is indifferent, 
it travels on a level road, neither helped nor 
hindered. And when it is hostile, it travels up- 
hill, with great waste of power and many accidents. 
There you have in a paragraph the correct theory 
as to the relation between the corporation and public 
opinion. There were several corporations — Stand- 
ard Oil and American Tobacco, for instance — that 
had a different theory. They came to believe that 
public opinion was the mere blowing of the wind 
among the leaves, and they ignored it. Result — 
the road that they travelled became so steep and 
rocky that they had to stop and break up their load 
into little pieces. 

However it may be in other countries, we have 
learned in the United States, at great cost to our 
prosperity, that no corporation can survive the hos- 
tility of the public. No matter if a corporation 

deals fairly with its employees. No matter if it 

150 



PUBLIC OPINION 151 

makes honest goods. No matter if it sells at a low 
price. No matter if it has opened up the markets 
of the world to American goods. No matter if it has 
enriched this country with millions of foreign gold 
and hundreds of millions. All this, as we have seen, 
counts for nothing. If the average man and woman 
and newspaper and magazine don't like that cor- 
poration, down it goes, as though it were a nuisance 
and a crime. 

The First Duty of a Corporation is to 
Secure the Goodwill of the Public. If this 

is not done, nothing else can be done properly or 
efficiently. 

Before an article is offered for sale — before any 
sales campaign is begun, these questions must be 
definitely answered: 

(1) What does the public think and feel concern- 
ing this company? 

(2) Are there any old grudges? 

(3) Are there any wrong impressions on the mind 
of the public? 

(4) What is being said about this company by its 
enemies and its competitors? 

These questions cannot be answered by the officials 
of the company. They cannot be answered by the 
directors, nor by any old-time employee of the com- 
pany. They can only be answered by someone 



152 ADS AND SALES 

who has the OUTSIDE POINT OF VIEW. The man 
who ought to have the courage and the information 
to answer them is the advertising manager. It is 
he who speaks to the public, and it is he who ought 
to keep in touch with public opinion. 

Such is the armor of self-conceit that few people 
are ever conscious of being disliked by the public. 
Most are buttressed about by their friends, their 
families, their employees. They may even flatter 
themselves that they are attacked because they are 
great — because they are shining marks. They 
regard ill-will complacently, as the tribute that 
Envy pays to Fame. 

A corporation may be hated so violently that its 
name has become an epithet to blaspheme with, 
yet its officials may be smugly ambling along to an 
inevitable smash-up, wholly unconscious of danger. 
Sometimes this hatred is well founded and sometimes 
it is based upon a medley of slanders and stupidities, 
thrown together by the competitors of the company. 
But no matter what the truth may be, the very first 
purpose of an American corporation must be to live 
on good terms with the American public. 

The next point to consider, in planning a sales 
campaign, is this — What part of the public do you 
wish to reach? Very few articles can be offered to 
EVERYBODY. 



PUBLIC OPINION 153 

If the article is for men only, or for women only, 
the public is cut in two. If it is a luxury, there are 
fully 25,000,000 people who cannot afford it. For 
most articles our general public of 90,000,000 whit- 
tles down to a BUYING public of perhaps 5,000,000 
families. 

Half the public are always women; and at least 
three-fourths of the BUYING public are WOMEN. 
How few sales managers realize this! According to 
an investigation recently made by the University of 
Wisconsin, NINE THOUSAND MILLION DOLLARS 
was spent by women last year for food, shelter, 
and clothing. 

Also, there are 9,000,000 negroes. Ten per cent 
of the American public is black. There are 
60,000,000 people who live outside of towns and 
cities. There are 2,000,000 house-servants, and 
3,000,000 people who live by mining, and 5,000,000 
people who live by iron and steel. 

There are 2,000,000 Jews in the composition of 
the American public, 3,000,000 Scandinavians, 
3,000,000 Canadians, and 12,000,000 who are either 
German or of German descent. All these must 
be kept in mind when a corporation speaks to the 
public through the pages of a national magazine. 

Then, when you are sure that you have conciliated 
the public, and when you have picked out your pos- 



154 ADS AND SALES 

sible customers, you are confronted with the third 
problem, which very few corporations ever success- 
fully solve — the problem of making these people 
interested in you and in the goods that you have 
to sell. 

Have you ever stopped to think how few adver- 
tisements you can remember? If, therefore, you 
cannot remember the advertisements of other people, 
how can you expect them to remember yours? 

The fact is that the public is absorbed in its own 
affairs. Every man has troubles of his own. The 
pedler with a basket is hoping to have a push- 
cart. The push-cart man is hoping to have a little 
store. The storekeeper is hoping to have a clerk. 
And so it goes, up to the President of the United 
States, who is hoping to have a second term. 

The public cares little or nothing for you or your 
goods. Ten to one it has never had one serious 
thought about you. It has no reason to believe that 
you are really trying to render it a service. It has 
been fooled ten thousand times. It is suspicious 
and indifferent and busy. 

Whoever would make the public pay attention 
must talk the language of the public. He must talk 
from the public's point of view. If he can do no 
more than roar his own praises through a mega- 
phone, then the public will regard him as nothing 



PUBLIC OPINION 155 

but a noise. No matter if he takes full pages, or 
double pages, to tell what a grand man he is, if he 
can only talk about himself, he is soon set down as 
a common bore, and sometimes as a nuisance. 

Cater — cater — cater! That is the secret of 
success. No corporation can do what it likes or 
how it likes. No matter how sublime and majestic 
it may feel, it must be sociable and polite. The 
bigger it is, the more good manners it must have. 
It must defer and beg pardon and smile. 

Carnegie, who was the greatest of salesmen, 
learned this fact early in his career. That is why 
he is the only man in the world who has three 
hundred millions and popularity. He catered to 
his customers even in the smallest details. For 
instance, when he wanted to capture the trade of 
Japan, he picked out one of his handsomest sales- 
men. He had this salesman placed on the staff of 
the Governor of Pennsylvania, with the rank of 
Colonel. This move gave the salesman a right to a 
title and a uniform, and he went out to Japan in 
a blaze of military glory. Result — the steel rails 
for the Japanese railways were made in Pittsburgh. 

Why have the Germans captured a large share of 
foreign trade from Great Britain? Because the Ger- 
mans have learned to cater. The British had been 
selling needles to the Brazilians, wrapped in black 



156 ADS AND SALES 

paper. The German needle-makers looked into the 
matter, found out that the Brazilians have a strong 
dislike of black paper or black cloth. They put up 
needles in bright red paper and at once got the trade 
of three million Brazilian homes. That was catering. 

A German shoe-manufacturer heard that the 
people of Trinidad have broad flat feet, so that no 
British shoes could be worn with comfort. He sent 
an expert to take measurements, made a special 
Trinidad shoe, and became the official shoe-maker 
of the island. That was catering. 

Another wide-awake German, who made cotton 
goods, found out that several million British handker- 
chiefs — red handkerchiefs — were being sold every 
year to the women of Russia. Also, he found out 
that the Russian women preferred square handker- 
chiefs, and that the British factories persisted in 
making them oblong. Happy thought — he made 
several tons of square handkerchiefs and easily 
swept aside his British competitors. That was 
catering. 

Give the people what they want and they will 
pay well for it — that is a rule that works in all 
manner of trades and professions. The selling price 
of an article is not decided by its manufacturing 
cost, as most manufacturers believe. It is decided 
by public opinion. Suppose a man made an auto- 



PUBLIC OPINION 157 

mobile out of concrete; suppose it cost him fifty 
dollars and he offered it for sale at fifty-one. No- 
body would buy it, because nobody wants a concrete 
automobile. 

There are some articles, such as aeroplanes, which 
are being sold to-day at an absurdly high price, 
because of the interest of the public; and there are 
others — a great many others that are being sold at 
absurdly cheap prices, because the public has never 
paid any attention to them. A little Gillette razor 
is sold for the same price as 360 pounds of steel rail. 
One high-grade Victrola costs the price of forty 
barrels of flour. One typewriter would swap for a 
whole wagonload of tinware. One fluffy hat, in the 
millinery store, will easily bring more money than 
fifty pairs of socks. 

It is a curious but universal fact in human nature 
that the same man who readily pays a thousand dol- 
lars for a surgical operation, two thousand for an 
automobile, three thousand for a diamond brooch, 
and five thousand for a little help from his lawyer, 
will at the same time strongly object if he is asked 
to pay ten cents a pound for sugar or two cents a 
pound for potatoes. 

The public, in fact, is very much like the SOIL. 
If you neglect it, you will get poor crops; but if you 
pay attention to what it needs, if you fertilize it 



158 ADS AND SALES 

with courtesy and fair play, you will get paid for 
your trouble a hundred-fold. 

See what has been done by scientific agriculture. 
On a single acre in South Carolina, one man has 
grown 228 bushels of corn. On another acre in 
Wyoming, 1000 bushels of potatoes have been dug. 
The Great Desert is being made to produce record- 
breaking crops. The very nature of trees and shrubs 
is being transformed by the witchery of Burbank- 
ism. Bees have been persuaded to make twice as 
much honey, by being supplied with ready-made 
combs. Ten blades of grass are being grown where 
one grew before, and the age-long dreams of farmers 
are coming true, by the use of scientific methods of 
agriculture. 

All these miracles will be duplicated, some day, by 
SCIENTIFIC PUBLICULTURE. We will have a new 
sort of scientist — salesmen and advertising men — 
who will be able to influence the public mind, just 
as a chemist influences the compounds of his labora- 
tory, or as a New farmer influences the soil of his 
farm. 

These men will know the mass of the people and 
be known by them. They will be respected and 
trusted. They will be called upon to shape legis- 
lation and to suggest treaties and reciprocities. 
They will be employed to help the Presidents of 



PUBLIC OPINION 159 

universities as well as the Managers of corporations. 
They may even go so far as to reconstruct our whole 
system of education, so as to base it upon a study 
of the human race itself. 

These architects of salesmanship will create new 
standards of commercial conduct. They will abolish 
the mere talk and trickery of advertising and de- 
velop the selling of goods into a profession as highly 
honored as that of law. They will teach States and 
countries to advertise, and they will create adver- 
tisements that will be as important as the brief of 
a great lawyer or the report of a Federal Commis- 
sion. They will be publicists of a new species, too 
busy for public office and too responsible for the 
play-acting of politics. 

All this may seem, to people of low ideals, a voy- 
age in dreamland; but it is not. It is the forecast- 
ing of what is certain to take place — of what is now 
beginning to take place. I am stating what I know 
to be true when I say that there are salesmen and 
advertising men now at work who are consciously 
building up their profession on the broadest and high- 
est lines; and who have already learned to use, in a 
very practical way, the methods of science and the 
facts of sociology. 



M 



CHAPTER TWELVE 

THE PROFESSIONAL OUTSIDER 

OST business men live too close to their 
work. They never see how it looks from 
the outside. They never see it as a 
whole. Day by day they have grown up with it, 
until now they know only its details. They don't 
know its general appearance or how it compares 
with other businesses. 

The fact is that we are usually blind to the things 
we see every day. Many a father has been blind to 
the peculiar genius of his own children. Many a 
mother, even, has not really understood her own 
daughter; and the first real appreciation that the 
daughter received has come from some sympathetic 
outsider. 

Now, the ancient idea was that every business had 
to have a wall around it. No one could enter a 
business until he had served seven years as an ap- 
prentice; and he was not supposed to become skilled 
until the latter end of his life. It was the custom in 
Egypt to compel every son to continue his father's 

business, so that jobs went by birth instead of by 

160 



PROFESSIONAL OUTSIDER 161 

fitness. But this ancient idea did not work. It 
held the world fast in a rut. There was no 
progress and no invention until these foolish 
trade walls were thrown down. Modern progress 
began when the insiders first had a chance to 
get out, and when the outsiders had a right to 
get in. 

The Outside Point of View. Here you 

have the secret of many a great American suc- 
cess. Our national tendency to throw every door 
open to everybody has done more for our pros- 
perity than any of us realize. It has cross-fertilized 
our industries. It has abolished hundreds of the 
ancient stupidities that had descended from father to 
son for centuries. And it helped to make us what 
we are — the most inventive and adaptable nation 
in the world. 

Look into the history of your own business and 
see if this is not true — that every radical and far- 
reaching improvement came into it from the outside. 
Just as most inventions for women have been made 
by men who were, temporarily, doing women's work, 
so in most industries the sweeping changes have 
been introduced by men who had not been trained 
in the old-fashioned ways. It is invariably the new- 
comer who looks, wonders, experiments, and invents; 
and it is invariably the old-timer who makes the 



162 ADS AND SALES 

most opposition, at first, to the adoption of the new 
ideas. 

Pasteur, for instance, was not a doctor. He revo- 
lutionized the medical profession. He put the 
science of preventing disease upon a new basis. 
He was one of the few great originating thinkers of 
whom all doctors boast; and many of them, no 
doubt, will be surprised to learn that Pasteur was 
never a doctor. He was an outsider. 

Morse, who gave us the telegraph; Field, who gave 
us the cable, and Bell, who gave us the telephone, 
were all outsiders. Not one was an electrician. 
Not one had been through any sort of apprenticeship 
or training in any electrical profession. Morse was 
a portrait painter. Field was a merchant. Bell 
was a professor of elocution. 

Bessemer, who helped to start a revolution in the 
art of steel-making, was not a steel-maker. He was 
a man who possessed a natural genius for invention, 
and who went about scattering his brilliant sugges- 
tions in all directions. 

Neither Carnegie, who was for twenty years the 
world's greatest steel-maker, nor Judge Gary, who 
succeeded him, had any practical experience in any 
sort of steel-mill or blast furnace. Both were out- 
siders. Carnegie, when he launched into steel, was 
a railway official, and Gary was a lawyer. 



PROFESSIONAL OUTSIDER 163 

McCormick, who invented the reaper, was not a 
machinist. He worked out the correct principles for 
his machine without ever having seen a factory or a 
foundry. To all the manufacturers of his day, he 
was an outsider — a mere farmer who had no right 
to an opinion on mechanics. 

Harriman, the first of railroad organizers, was not 
a railroad man. He was a Wall Street broker. 
Allis, the founder of the Allis-Chalmers plant, was 
a bookkeeper, not a machinist. Eastman, creator 
of kodaks, was a bank clerk. Porter, improver of 
engines, was a lawyer. Fulton, pioneer of steam- 
boating, was an artist. Whitney, inventor of the 
cotton-gin, was a law-student. 

In the history of all progressive countries, we can 
notice the constant appearance of the outsider. 
Was not Cartwright a preacher, Caxton a merchant, 
and Herschel a musician? Were not Cromwell, 
Napoleon, and Garibaldi — men who changed the 
map of Europe — a trio of outsiders? Even John 
Calvin, the law-maker of the Reformation, was not 
an ordained priest; and Columbus, the greatest of 
sailors, was trained to be a comber of wool. 

No matter in what line of activity you look, you 
will find this to be the almost invariable law — 

Small Improvements Come from Within; 
Great Improvements Come from Without. 



164 ADS AND SALES 

The man who has been in one business all his life 
has become swamped with details. He has learned to 
take for granted all the main facts that concern 
him, and he is invariably trying to make the best of 
adverse conditions, instead of trying to change the 
conditions. 

One overwhelming proof of this law is the fact 
that both Carnegie and Rockefeller, the two richest 
Americans, made a life-habit of managing their 
affairs from the outside. Carnegie was seldom in 
Pittsburgh and Rockefeller was seldom in the oil 
regions. Both escaped the danger of details. They 
did not allow themselves to be worried by small 
matters. They refused to be local. They stood 
outside of their own organizations and considered 
them always from a national point of view. 

To expect every manager to have the genius of a 
Carnegie or a Rockefeller is, of course, unfair to the 
managers. Moreover, most managers are expected 
to spend nine-tenths of their time on the spot. Their 
Boards of Directors compel them to be local and 
departmental. They are forced, often against their 
wishes and their instincts, to view their own duties 
constantly from the inside. 

To help such managers there has come in recent 
years the PROFESSIONAL OUTSIDER, who is some- 
times an engineer, sometimes an advertising expert, 



PROFESSIONAL OUTSIDER 165 

and sometimes a nondescript genius, of the Benja- 
min Franklin type, who has a natural faculty for 
making rough places smooth and crooked places 
straight. Taking them altogether, these profes- 
sional outsiders are at the present time a motley 
crew. Some have real experience and many great 
achievements to their credit. Others have over- 
capitalized a few small exploits. And a few are 
mere adventurers and interlopers, with no assets 
except bluff and impertinence. 

This professional outsider, when he is of the high- 
est rank, is a new sort of a man with a new sort of 
knowledge. As yet he has no acknowledged status 
in the business world. His only diploma is his 
record. His only credentials are what his clients 
say of him. But his work is often of the very high- 
est value. He has put new industries on their feet 
and saved others from heavy losses. He has trans- 
planted methods from one business into another. 
He has created new policies, both in selling and manu- 
facturing. He has put corporations in touch with 
the public. And he has in many instances created 
new standards of efficiency, by which an entire trade 
has been lifted to a higher level. 

One by one, both sales managers and manufac- 
turers are being converted to the theory of the pro- 
fessional outsider. They do not think to-day, as 



166 ADS AND SALES 

most of them did formerly, that their one particular 
business is the most unique thing in the world. They 
are not so apt to say, " My business is so peculiar 
that no one can understand it in less than three 
generations." They are beginning to see that THE 
REALLY UNIQUE POINTS IN A BUSINESS ARE VERY 
FEW, and the common things are very many. 

One Chicago manufacturer was won over recently 
in a somewhat brisk manner. He was travelling to 
New York and had begun to express his very posi- 
tive opinions to his seat-mate, regarding "business 
doctors and efficiency fellows, who pretend to teach 
a man his own business." The seat-mate listened 
quietly for half an hour or longer, and then said, 
" Your views on this question happen to be especially 
interesting to me, as I am an ' efficiency fellow ! my- 
self. Now, suppose we make a test right here and 
now. You tell me what your business is, and I'll 
wager that in ten minutes I can tell you something 
about it that you do not know and which will be 
very profitable to you. Whoever loses will pay for 
our dinners this evening." 

The manufacturer agreed. " I make go-carts," he 
said. " I made thirty thousand of them last year." 

The efficiency man reflected for four or five 
minutes. Then he said, " Well, I dare say that 
you have never stopped to think that all your 



PROFESSIONAL OUTSIDER 167 

go-carts are bought by women, not by men. I dare 
say you have never once thought of asking any 
woman, even your wife, how a go-cart ought to be 
made. I dare say you make a go-cart without a 
pocket, and with no place for a milk-bottle or a nap- 
kin. I dare say that there is nothing on the front of 
the go-cart for the baby to look at. I dare say that 
many women object to the way in which the go-cart 
is folded, as not one woman in a hundred has a 
mechanical mind. I dare say that your business is 
masculinized from start to finish. Very likely your 
head salesman, and even your advertising writer, 
are unmarried, babyless men. And yet you wonder 
why your customers cause you so much trouble." 

The manufacturer gasped in open-mouthed won- 
der for a moment and then surrendered. "Come 
along into the dining-car," he said, "and we'll talk it 
over. If that is what you fellows call the outside 
point of view, it has got fortune-telling beat to a 
frazzle." 



DEC 15 1911 



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